Papers please?

Today was documentation day. We went through all our important papers to decide what is important enough to carry across the ocean.
I realized how much we take for granted living our daily lives in our home country. We have had that marriage certificate now for 12 years and have never once used it. But apparently we need to have it, and a copy, with us at all times now.
The fabulous part about this process is that we are going to be so much more organized and streamlined. We are headed for a more simple life, in terms of the amount of stuff we deal with anyway, and I am really looking forward to that.

Home from vacation; packing begins in earnest

So now we're back from our little hiatus in which we pretended we weren't busy packing our house to leave for a year. We had a nice time in Maine and New Hampshire despite some torrential summer downpours and got some good extended family time. We visited with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends, performed our annual wedding re-enactment on our anniversary, swam in the pond, and generally had a good ol' time.

Now, however, it's down to brass tacks (now there's an expression to consider...how would that translate into German?). The kids are off to day camp for the next two weeks and we parents have to get to business. There are plenty of jobs that need doing in addition to going room by room to sort things out so we'll be plenty busy. Too bad we don't have a dumpster into which we can just fling all the stuff we no longer need.

School's out...for now

One chapter to a close...school is out (I can't decide if it feels like a finally or a how can it be so soon?) and we hope to shift our attention more fully to our impending departure. Somehow we have to try to pack (and ship) things to our new apartment, prepare our house for someone else to live in, visit all those people we're supposed to see before we go, and not wear ourselves down to the bone. It makes me tired just thinking about it.

Meanwhile, we've ALMOST got all the documentation ready for work permits. The latest bureaucratic issue is that they need a translation of Katy's diploma--apparently they want to actually be able to READ it and Latin isn't good enough. Who ever heard of someone reading a diploma? And why do they need it anyway? But there it is, we can't work without it, so we have to get a translation sent to us so we can send it to the relocation people. Unbelievable.

We're also working with our tutor on the last (and most important) lessons in German--how to order food in a restaurant. We'll be looking at all the food names to try to learn what they are so we'll be able to get something we want (and not things we don't want!). The funniest one so far is a dish that comes mit Musik. Apparently the story is that after you eat it, YOU supply the music! Those crazy Germans.

Can't say I have anything particularly new to add except that Oscar made me realize today that there are under two months to departure date...starting to get the "Ohmygoodness--toomuchtodo--cantgetitalldone--aaagghhh!" feeling more and more often. Extra passport photos, shipping companies, paperwork, doctor's visits, more paperwork...this is hard!

Meanwhile, we ARE having fun learning some German together. Today we started in on the things used in schule. Bleistifte, Filzstifte, Waxmalstifte...let me tell you, there are a lot of Stiften out there. But the kids are doing great and whatever we do now can only help later.

Here it is May 24th and I can't quite believe we're really going to go to Germany for a year. Things are falling into place--albeit gradually--and little by little the things that we need are coming together. We've got a place to live, a place to work, a place for the kids to go to school...we don't really speak any German yet, but we'll figure it out, right? If we all work together--all 5 of us--this ought to be a fun way to share our experiences with our friends. Tchuss!