My tickets are booked. I head over on the 21st and return on the 28th. By the time I get back, I will be a citizen of both the UK and America. I am excited. Plus, I intend to attend ALC while I am there. I also plan to hang out with as many people as I can and just generally enjoy being in England for 7 days!!
The last couple weeks nothing much has happened for me to update on, and today I have several things I want to write about.
Last night Sam did really well in Football. He had his name announced several times for tackles he made against the other team. A lot of the time, the other teams send the ball down the other side of the field, but last night he got lots of opportunities to get the first touch and he did!!
This morning, Evan’s sister was here and was showing us this house she had found that she was considering buying. It is in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Lafayette, but from the pictures it looked like no one was living in it and it needs a LOT of work outside. There were no pictures of the inside of the house…which to me says bad news. Anyway, we and Jane, convinced Sarah it wasn’t the kind of house she wanted because it was too much work. However, Evan and I are seriously thinking of going and looking at it! It is less than we thought we would spend, but we could fix it up and because of the neighborhood it is in, we are sure we would get a return when we sold it…even if we just kept it a couple years! I have always wanted to buy and fix up a house to resell and make a profit!
Now, one of the exiciting things I found out this week, is two travel dates. I am going to be going to the National Missionary Convention in November and in December I am going to be going to Costa Rica! My expenses will be paid for the NMC and Costa Rica, but I will probably need to raise some of the cost of Costa Rica. I will certainly be sending out letters asking for people to be praying…and that is far more imortant than the money really.
I have come to see more and more how the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy and if you are attempting anything that goes above the daily living of the Christian life, I think he hates that even more and will do whatever he can to steal, kill or destroy whatever it is you are doing. It is as if you are sticking your head above the crowd and the enemy doesn’t want you to do that. Anyway, I have to confirm with Gary what will be paid and make sure I can really go these dates, because when I found out about the opportunity, Gary wasn’t in the office, so I haven’t had a chance to tell him I want to go!
The paperwork for my Duel Citizenship has come through! I now go to a ceremony to accept it, which I will be doing at the end of October. Then I can get my British Passport! I am excited. Duel Citizenship is kinda fun to think about.
Even though on a day to day basis, it doesn’t make much difference to my living, it does mean Evan and I have the choice of living in the UK or America and travelling in the EU will be much easier!
We bought a car this week. Here are some pictures. It is used, but in excellent condition.
It is a Chrysler Concord, with every gadget and button you could want to play with inside!
We are now taking name suggestions to name this beautiful car that will drive me to Indy and back 5 days a week.
Secondly, I didn’t really say too much about our time in Chicago the first couple days we were here, but we couldn’t have picked a better hotel. It was called The Hotel Monaco and was in downtown Chicago just a couple of blocks from the Taste Festival that was going on. I told Evan to take some pictures, but until I looked at the camera a few days ago, I didn’t realise he had, so here they are!
And Evan’s favorite part of the hotel room was this masterpiece!
We sat in bed every morning and watched a couple of hours of TV because we were waking up between 4 and 5 each morning due to jet-lag.
This week we have had our good friends Samantha and Shane visiting us. Today we headed to York. Towards the end of our day there, it seemed to hit me that this was my last week to get in everything ‘English’. I kinda panicked, thinking I somehow needed to represent my life in England with something I could buy. When I couldn’t find anything, I started taking pictures. I got a few shots that I thought were pretty good at representing some of the culture and/or typical scenes in everyday life.
This first shot is of two lads in school uniform, throwing a ruby ball back and forth to each other while waiting for the bus. They are standing right next to a post box…how much more ‘English’ can you get??!!
The next is a shot of a row of terrace houses with their brightly coloured front doors.
Next, is a tea room I spotted as we waited to catch the Park n Ride bus back to the car.
Lastly, is this ultimate classic scene. Around 4 in the afternoon, the sun came out and it got really warm outside. As we crossed the bridge over the river Ouse, I spotted The Slug and Lettuce, the great pub chain. Outside, it was packed with late afternoon sunbathers. In the English summer, sunbathing outside a pub on a river/canal is all you need!
This week has been fun and also stressful, but I guess moving will always be stressful, no matter how well you plan, organise, etc.
We have had fun with Evan’s parents here. We have been to Bolton Abbey; York and ate at our favorite spot, Oscar’s. We also spent one morning at the Trafford Centre and today we headed over to the Lake District. We stopped in Keswick and Ambleside.
We also made a decision this week that Evan is going to fly home with his parents on Tuesday and take all four cats. This involved booking Evan on the same flight as his parents; buying 4 cages for the cats suitable for Air Travel and getting the cats Vet checked. We used PayPal money to pay for the cages, which was a bonus!
On Friday, we got some advice about money and finances before we head to America and once we are living there. A few things we need to do are open a new bank account; do our American taxes for last year in America; write to the Tax people here and get a refund for the year we here in England because we will have been paying income tax based on working 12 months and we are leaving early, so we should get a refund.
While Evan is gone next week, one of the things I am going to work on is putting furniture and stuff we are not taking with us, onto ebay to sell. Sam and Shane, be expecting a half empty house when you get here. Sorry!!
Part of getting stuff listed on ebay is that we had a company come and give us an estimate for shipping our stuff to America. I had estimated that we would take between 120-170 cubic feet with us to America. When we moved from Northampton to here, the van we rented was 250cubic feet and I figured we would be taking about half of that to America. The estimate we got was 147 cubic feet. How good am I!! Maybe I should go and work for a moving company! Anyway, it has spurred me on to start getting rid of stuff NOW.
If the cats are going to be living with Bill and Jane, we want to get ourselves out of here as quickly as possible, so that they do not have to take care of them for too long.
I will try to post some pictures of this week soon, but for now, I will end this very long post.
See Evan’s Blog for details on our hike yesterday. Too late to post now and I have been busy all day, so just didn’t get to it!
Evan surprised me with a weekend in York for my birthday. Apparently, I went there when I was quite young (about 7), but I don’t remember it at all. I remember visiting the university when I was choosing where to go, but didn’t spend much time in the city, just at the university.
Anyway, Evan and I had a great time. I have added several pictures on Facebook. It is too much work to mess with them all in photoshop just to add them on here, when I can upload them straight to Facebook without doing anything to them!
