Packing continued...

I've been sooo nervous about not getting this visa in time. We just got an email saying that it was all a mistake, I never needed to get this visa! What a relief! So  will be traveling with Andre next Saturday! Now we're busy booking accommodation. We found a B&B in what sounds to be a nice town. A bit out of Zurich but it sounds good. Just hope they still have the room available after all the uncertainty with the visa... We didn't have much choice of accommodation. Close to Zurich gets really expensive, close to the office was all full and it seemed that a furnished apartment for only a month or two would also be more expensive and not that many available.

So anyway, Andre sorted out his cupboards last weekend. He's got loads of cupboard space so had loads to sort out. I lied on the bed saying "out" for just about everything coming out of his cupboard. He ended up having a 'recycling' box and a 'For Sale' box. He's opened his own Sport Shop in the lounge selling something for any sport you can think of. We took pictures of everything and 

emailed a list and also put it on gumtree. 

On Monday our boxes for shipping will be collected. One day earlier than planned. I keep on finding MORE stuff that needs to go with... I packed my duvet this afternoon. Wanted to see if it will fit in a suitcase. Juergen is coming to visit over Easter and is bringing an extra suitcase so I'm thinking of sending my duvet with him. 

Ergh I just remembered I still have to phone Discovery health. I've been struggling to get my claims through to them for so long. Have to check that they got it this time. 

One more stumbling block

I just realized I never let you know here when we're leaving.. We booked tickets to Zurich leaving here the 11 April. Today Andre phoned the embassy to see how my long stay visa is coming along and we got another little surprise: It could take 8-12 weeks :-( And it's only been 2 weeks now. We're going to see what we can do. The very nice embassy lady said my visa shouldn't be a problem, it was Andre's permit that was the difficult one. So maybe we will be lucky and still get it in time. Otherwise we will try and find a way around it. I really don't want to only fly out later. Then I will have to change my interview too and I don't want to do that...

Langebaan

We had a wonderful weekend in Langebaan. A very relaxing camping weekend with the most perfect weather.

Langebaan 13 -15 March 2009 from Anneliese Mostert on Vimeo.

Packing

I started packing today!

We're using Biddulphs to ship some boxes over to Zurich so I went to pick up empty boxes, bubble wrap and tissue paper from them. Today I started unpacking my classroom boxes which I packed when moving out of my classroom end of last year. I need to minimize those boxes quite a bit... I changed Andre's lounge into a colourful classroom! 

After unpacking just about everything I decided I first need to sort out my files. No space to do that in the lounge with half a classroom all over the floor, so I moved all my files to Andre's room. It took me just about all day but now I have super organised files!

(Andre's lounge is still looking exactly as it is on the picture above.) Packing to be continued tomorrow...

The things we do for love

Andre's mom occasionally makes stuffed chicken for a Sunday lunch. Andre said I would need to learnt how to do that, but I always said I would never make stuffed chicken. It looked like so much work, took all morning and then you had a whole kitchen full of dirty dishes. And I don't like the idea of touching a whole, raw, dead chicken.

Well I still don't like touching a dead chicken but I did! With the help of my mom!

I decided when Andre returned from Switzerland the last time that I will cook a big lunch for him and I wanted to impress him by making my first stuffed chicken. I don't really like the normal bread crumb stuffing and I like to try new things (not always a good idea but anyway). So I decided to stuff the chicken with dried fruit. I knew Andre's not so keen on dried fruit, but I like it and a stuffed chicken is a stuffed chicken. 

It was delicious!! I'll tell you what we did (my mom and I). You rub the chicken with some salt, pepper and oil. Oh and trim off some of the excess fat. Then you soak some raisins and dried apricots and prunes in Rooibos tea or hot water for about 40 min. You can chop the dried fruit before you soak them. Drain the fruit and stuff it into the chicken. Not too much though. You can leave some of the fruit around the chicken too. Also chop and fry an onion to add to stuffing. Oh and you can add a finely chopped apple and saute with the onion. We forgot about that but it should be nice. We then placed the fruity chicken in a roasting bag. Roasting bag in a dish. And dish in the oven at about 180 C or 200 C I think for about an hour or until cooked.

Everyone enjoyed it! :-) 

Next time I want to try stuffed chicken with spinach and feta.

Finally off to Switzerland soon!

On Wednesday we decided we're now giving up on the Swiss permit. We had all the documents ready to apply for the EEA Family permit to go to the UK. I even had an hour long telephone interview with a teaching agency to be able to teach there. We had all our supporting letters etc. and was just about to pay the deposit when we got an email from Switzerland! 

They said that the AWA and BFM (?) approved Andre's permit and that we now only have to wait for the final OK from the Migration office. Not sure exactly what these abbreviations are for... I found American Watchmakers Association for AWA, maybe cos Andre likes the watches over there! No, it must have something to do with immigration and work permits. So still we didn't get excited because we have now learnt not to get excited in advance about anything to do with the Swiss work permit!

This morning we received an email to say we have to go to the Swiss embassy in Cape Town to fill in some Entry Form. We got there just in time this morning and luckily the same friendly lady we had last time helped us again! Filled out the form, Andre went to get ID photos taken and then when she checked on her PC she said that Andre already has the permit! According to the system he has been approved and only needs to bring his passport 24 hours before we want to leave.

YippeeYipeeYipee!! Still feels a bit unreal. Shame and Andre had his wisdom teeth removed yesterday so he wasn't feeling to great. Maybe I can give him some champagne through a straw later to celebrate...

Next week I'll start finalizing the shipping. We're thinking of leaving here middle next month.

Posting a video from vimeo to blogger.com

This is not a kind of topic I would normally write about, but Andre felt that since we couldn't really find any help on how to post my video from vimeo to my blog without using the blog "Add Video" button, I might help someone else by explaining how we did it.

In the end it was quite simple really. It just took us a while to figure out what to do since Andre did it differently posting to his wordpress blog.

Ok, so open your video in Vimeo (where we store our videos, like YouTube, but I like Vimeo  better). Then in the top right hand corner of your video it says Share and then below that Embed. Click on Embed, highlight the whole code and paste that into your blog.

There you go! Easy as pie! :-)

My new present!

My wonderful husband bought me such a great new toy in Switzerland! He got me the Flip Mino HD video camera! He really spoilt me this time!!

It's great to play around with. Smaller than my cell phone so it's always in my handbag and so easy to use. I've also edited my first video in iMovie today and had fun playing around with all the tools there. I'll add the video too. It was a practice run and I tried to use all the functions in iMovie.

The video was taken on my uncle's farm in Franschhoek. They got two little potbelly pigs and have lots of other farm animals there too.


La Bri farm animals from Anneliese Mostert on Vimeo.