I'm here!

I'm here! I'm alive!

Okay, so I know a lot of people are annoyed at me for not updating straight away but, if I'm being perfectly honest, I just didn't feel like it. I'm sorry! I've been really busy organizing the second stage of the visa process and settling in. Before I knew it, a week had passed! I called mom on Saturday after my visa application was totally collected and in the mail, so hopefully she's updated a lot of people. If not, I'll update you!

I won't assume you know what a visa is, so let me explain. It's a document that allows you to live in the country lawfully without being a citizen or resident. It also allows you to work! My last visa was only for 9 months and expires at the end of this week. Being in the country without the visa is very very illegal and can come with big consequences hence why we were falling on top of ourselves to get the application out asap. I know, I know, it's all very last minute and I have lots of excuses but none of them are good. The good news is that our account was charged the processing fee yesterday which means that they have recieved the application and begun processing it. The only way they would have gotten the bank details is if they went through the application. Hurray! The fact that I had another visa processing prior to my current visa's expiry is pretty much my immunity to getting into trouble...I think. I won't get into it too much but I'm 89% sure that I'm good to go. Just in case I emailed an immigration lawyer ($25 a question!!!) to make sure. :)


Other than that, I don't have much of consequence to update on. I hung some new curtains (the Ikea Stockholm Blad ones in green) and they've instantaneously made a HUGE difference to our lounge room in a very good way. I've been watching the first 3 seasons of medium on dvd since I missed them....Chris has next week off from work but we're not sure what we're doing since we can't see Taylor Swift anymore :(. Today it is officially a week from my bday and I'm not sure what we're doing for that either.

In the mean time, embracing a more vegetarian lifestyle has been great! We do eat meat maybe once a week or every two weeks or if we visit someone for dinner and they've cooked meat (I mean, it's already dead and cooked, what difference does it make if it's in my tummy or in the garbage can, right?) But we haven't bought steak or chicken breasts or anything. I've learned that tofu tastes just like chicken and is amazingly versatile and that if you eat an entire stalk of broccoli in one sitting you get very stinky burps. LOL Overall we feel really good about the difference we've made in our lives and the small difference we might make in our world. By lowering our meat consumption to less than %5 of our overall diet we've significantly lowered our carbon footprint, lowered our risk for diseases, and have stopped contributing to the death of so many animals. Do I think that Farmer Joe is going to stop producing meat because I stopped buying it? No, but at least I can say with clear conscious that I played very little part in whatever it is he does on his farm and that is definitely good for my spirit. :)

That's all for today!