Not the Post I was Expecting to Write

Well, this has been an unexpected 24 hours. Our house was burglarized yesterday.
The thieves must have been watching us for awhile because they knew when we were gone. Monday is the day when we are absent from our house the longest. They had 8 hours in which to accomplish their task.

From what we can tell, they tried to pry open the back kitchen door first (the most private door to our house). When that didn't budge, they ripped the Arabic toilet window screen only to discover that it was barred (all our windows have bars). So then they had to move to our garden entrance which, while surrounded by our garden trees, is the most visible. This door obviously gave them trouble as well, but they finally succeeded in prying it open enough to get in.

They were thorough. They went through every room, drawer and suitcase. From the dusting the police did of fingerprints, it's obvious that they wore gloves. Our room was in complete disarray.

But it was an odd burglary for what they didn't take. They left our desktop computer, our passports, credit cards and our Wii. What they took was all very portable and they even took a plastic bag to carry it all in. They took 2 older iPods, the kids' Kindle Fire, our daughter's Nintendo DS, some cash and my husband's Mac.

The Mac is our biggest concern because of all the personal information on it. Hopefully the thieves only desire is to wipe everything from the computer to resell it.

The iPods are old and not much for resale value and the Kindle is completely useless to them since Amazon was able to wipe it and lock it down via internet.

What they took from us is our time, some financially valuable things and our sense of trust and safety in the house we're in. My poor son was very nervous and scared last night. My husband didn't sleep and I'm not sure when any of us will feel safe sleeping in this house again.

Unfortunately this also colors our view of living in a foreign culture. Our neighbors all said this never happens around here to them. I believe the fact that we're foreigners played a part in all this. Everyone that the police interviewed said that they didn't see anything. This is a very busy neighborhood where people are nearly always around and neighbor's routinely watch each other's business from their windows. If this neighborhood can't look out for us, do I want to stay in this house? Do I want to continue this adventure of living in a foreign country?

These are the sort of things you think about in the first 24 hours. For now, the priority is making sure our kids feel safe.