4.75 weeks to go

Another week has gone by and Emi and I have not got our visas or our passports back from the French consulate. Al's passport and visa arrived over a week ago, and he is off today to New York, via Honolulu. He's got a conference at Rutgers and is going to have a couple of days break in New York and a day lying on the beach in Honolulu as well. He reckons it's too early to worry about our passports non-arrival yet and that they should turn up in the next week or so.

We heard recently that Emi's enrolment has been accepted by her school in France - she is now enrolled and they are expecting her on day 1 of the new school year in September. She's a bit nervous about going to l'ecole d'Aniane - she had a nightmare the other night that she got hauled up in front of the headmaster there and couldn't understand a word he said!

It's weird with Al away - there's no-one here reminding me of 'jobs' that still have to be done, no-one going through checklists, no-one running around in a panic trying to find things. Although he did leave a 'note' on the desktop with some instructions on it. I miss him!!

We dropped a car-load of stuff off at the Auckland City Mission yesterday - mainly books and toys that have been sitting in the garage for 3 years since we did the renovation. They were pleased to have the stuff, and I hope Emily's unplayed-with dolls find their way to little girls who will enjoy them. There are probably 2 more car-loads to go, so we will take those down when Al gets back. Our 'house-sitters' will need somewhere to keep their stuff while they are living here so I had to get the garage cleaned out! Dear old Al had a dream recently where he was able to park his car in the garage - getting close to that dream, babe!!

The other riveting bit of news this week is that we have used up all our internet bandwidth yet again before our 4 weeks are up - we only get 1GB for the princely sum of $39 a month, and it's never enough!! Yet we are too stingy to pay an extra $10 for 4GB more. Well, it's hardly worth it for just another month. so I have to live without my podcasts, and we are back to dial-up speed for internet use. sigh. Sometimes NZ seems impossibly backward ....