I hoped I would have news of Joseph's visa but alas - nothing! There's a flight booked for today (Oct 28th) but with no visa as of late Friday (25th) we rescheduled for Nov 5th! I forgot to sign one of the papers (sent via FedEx to T.O.) that we need to submit for the Spousal Visa so we decided to hold off with that submission and just apply for a simple visitor's visa. At this stage we would happily take three months but are hoping for twelve ... so we wait some more!
Meantime …
Joseph has been busy driving between Toronto and Ottawa, visiting and saying goodbye (again) and shoving more of our wordily possessions into our tiny warehouse as he makes room for the new tenant (as of Nov 1st)… who will be sleeping in our bedroom!! I haven't met her but I'm pretty sure she expects to be sleeping there alone so that visa had better come through!!!
I've managed to fill my days ...
Jasper's 2nd birthday - He's still adorable even at two (I know it's early days still) and It was lots of fun watching him trying to hold up two fingers and how he quickly came to understand the "present" thing and now Grandpa Joe is going to be so impressed with how well he knows his dinosaurs. A tube of small ones with the names on the bottom in size 2 font so I'm no help but he now knows most of them.
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| Being kind to his birthday guests! |
The local "Port Festival" - another excuse for a party here on the dock! Make-your-own sandwich with champagne. Not quite the tall ships but fun none-the-less.This time I did NOT invite the crew from the prawn trawler outside the front door in for a shower!
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| More night murals! |
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| Mum and the flamingos - all pretty in pink! |
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| Our Chilean friend Sylvia and her vases in one of the galleries for the festival. |
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| Great use of a container!... a walk-through gallery |
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| The dolphins were performing for the crowds on the dock -right outside my front door. |
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| A sailing regatta |
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| It was quite hairy there for a while - we were on our feet thinking they would crash! |
There was our friend Patricio (Villaroel)'s 75th party where i thought I would be able to show off my spanish with all of their friends (from Chile) but sadly nobody took my lead so I it was English all afternoon.
Some movies: I liked Diana (I know a million won't), I really liked About Time and (a weird one for me) I enjoyed Rush, and last night I really enjoyed Captain Thomas and later I heard somebody else talk about the scene at the end, that I flashed back to at home, and thought about what it must have taken for him to do it, and I think that might win him an academy award! It's nice to have a some good movies to chose from for a change.
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| In the hills on the windy roads and this is what I saw as I rounded the corner! It's a koala with a baby on her back! |
A trip to IKEA (of course) - this time to buy for Cassia because there isn't an IKEA store within a million miles of where she is living. These will be added to their boxes that have been shipped from Spain and she'll use her relocation allowance to have them all sent to Esperance. Brilliant.
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| The $5ea lamps! |
It was fun shopping with somebody else's money except that I also managed to spend $100+ of my own! I picked up a couple of lamps ($5 ea)in As Is and I just don't know how but it ended up being that much so apparently there are still items we need!
Then Cassia & Pablo's 14 boxes of personal effects (the official name) arrived - sadly addressed to Pablo who wasn't here to pick them up, so there was a bit of paperwork involved to hand over to me and then off to customs to have them cleared and find out it required my passport for identification (huh - nothing else would do!) that for the first time in over a year I didn't have with me (different purse) and then once we had them satisfied there was a drive to the other side of town to be approved by Quarantine. Why you would have customs send you to "Quarantine" and even give you a map to show you how to get there and then have the building not have the word Quarantine visible anywhere - just the official government name DOFF (Dept. of Forest and Fisheries)!! is beyond me. So while I was waiting for clearance I filled in the feedback form to explain that to them and then luckily (for me) their system was down due to the ridiculously windy weather, so the officer took pity on me (I think) and gave approval without an inspection!! Yippee yippee! because an inspection would have required; only ONE person and the quarantine officer attending the inspection, and me (as if I could ask anybody else to do it) having to remove the boxes from the pallet, open them (with my own tools I took with me) and then repack and re-tape them (with my own tape I took with me) fourteen times and with my fingers crossed that the officer wouldn't notice there were feathers in the quilt and sleeping bag that I had answered "NO" to the question "are there any feathers, shells…" etc. on the form because Pablo forgot to answer that one (pourquoi?)!!
With all that help, it took longer to sign in at reception, than it did to pack and unpack the cars into my garage and what a weird and crazy thing to do with your brothers and sister that was really only possible on this one day in our lives … John was on holidays, Jen works three days a week and this wasn't one of them, David was days away from starting his new fancy job and me, well here I am after all these years. Crazy for sure!
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These are "luggage tags" from the Port Festival where they asked students "what would you pack if you were going on a trip". There were hundreds of these but I couldn't get over how many said my iPod or iPad !
I think Apple should use them... well except for this one!
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