Home is Where Your Stuff Is...

It has come to my attention that I am a terrible blogger and picture taker. Unfortunately, for those of you interested in what goes on in my life, you will simply have to deal with the lack of pictures and very inconsistent postings. If you're reading this thanks for being a trooper!

It's been nearly a month since my last post and my list of blog events only includes five things so that should help explain my lack of posting. My life is pretty boring at the moment.

School is just that...school. I've started getting some grades back on assignments and I'm not failing! I'm now half way through the semester and it seems it is getting quite a bit harder to motivate myself on assignments. My Philosophy class is actually my favorite because we get together and just have great conversations about all kinds of things and its fun that I get to provide the only biological sciences perspective. The last few weeks we talked about bioethics and research on animals which led to me watching this awesome video.

Matt and I received callings in the ward a few weeks ago. Matt is now the second counselor in the Young Men's and is in church of just one young deacon. He's been enjoying going to mutual (weekly youth activity), but I think he struggles to have lessons with just one individual on Sunday. I got called as the Ward Music Chairman. Basically I organize all the hymns for Sunday. It's been fun to know what hymns we are singing each Sunday, but I feel I am very ill-equipped for such a calling as my slim musical ability has not been used in a long time. I'm also playing the piano in Relief Society which has been even more challenging. Although that is not part of my calling, I wish to help so I choose the songs and then I have to practice them so I can play well enough for people to sing to. So far I am failing miserably, but I am very grateful for this opportunity to improve and that the sisters are so patient with me.

The whole place was covered in loads
of containers and big machinery

At then end of last month we finally received our 13 boxes we had shipped from the US! Before the boxes arrived we had to drive to the airport to get our items cleared by customs and see if we needed a quarantine inspection, which we did of course. I was so glad I had put so much work into getting everything ready because it all went pretty smoothly. Apparently most people don't get all the paperwork needed, or wait till after their shipment arrives making it all more difficult. When we went to the port early in the morning we had to sit by our boxes for over an hour until the quarantine woman came. We only had to open two boxes to show her some things and I was so glad! I thought we would have to open and unpack a whole bunch of stuff. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get a cargo van or trailer help so we had to call a taxi to get our stuff home. In the end we got about $5000 worth of items for only $1000 total! I would recommend UBox Worldwide to anyone shipping lots of boxes. Now that we've unpacked it all our place feels much more like home!

We've finally got a lot of those last items like a Blu-ray player and desk chair which I really needed. Our Sony Blu-ray player is awesome because we can stream Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Netflix through it and it plays all our US DVD's and Blu-rays as well as Australia ones! I did the research to find a Universal player and I'm glad I did because it saved us a lot of money. We can now play wii games too and all I had was to get a cheap universal adapter online. Ebay has been my best friend to get plug converters, surge protectors, and any other item we need at a good price. Our next plan is painting which has been recently approved by the landlords. It's too bad we didn't ship most of Matt's painting equipment because he is struggling to find replacement stuff here, but oh well.

Odin on his new window
bed Carina got him

Once we got all our stuff I was anxious to get the cat documents so we could finalize shipping our Odin from the US. It turns out the official document declaring the cat importable is completely lost. In addition to this piece of bad news, some animal shipping companies quoted me $5000 for the whole process including the 1-month in quarantine here. I had planned on about $2000 according to others I knew that had shipped their animals. After some serious reflection I realized Odin had been through a lot and would likely have some behaviour issues if I tried to ship him. In the end, it wasn't right for the cat or us to have him shipped to us. I'm positive it was the right thing to do and we are lucky that my sister is a very affectionate owner that I know will take great care of him! I'm also lucky that she will send me pics and videos of him too! Although we can't possibly replace Odin we are in the process of cat shopping and I will let you know when we have something finalized! Matt is amazing that he lets me have giant stuffed panda bears and animals even though he is allergic.

On to other things...my love of public transportation has increased as it has provided the perfect time to read some new books that my sister recommended. For those of you interested I have now read A Posse of Princesses, Crown Duel, Mesmer Book 1 & 2 (Book 3 isn't out yet), and I'm not sure what to start next. I've been reading so fast that I have bought more books than usual for my kindle so I recently got my free library card so I can now borrow. It seems they don't have a particularly large selection though.

On my visit to the library I had a fun surprise as I ran into four of the sister missionaries in my ward (we have 6 total). They were going to the shopping center for lunch so I joined them and it was fun getting to know them better on their p-day (the one day off from proselyting each week). We even had a nice miniature lesson with a guy that was at the table with us and asked if we were Jehovah Witnesses. Missionary moments are always fun and I was so proud of the new sisters! We also saw the other two sisters so it was a missionary party at the shopping center! Two of the sisters are what we call greenies and have only been in the mission about a week. Surprisingly their trainers are also greenies and have been here for only a month or two! Two are Chinese with one on a Chinese speaking mission and the other is English speaking. There is also a brand new sister from Tahiti who is learning English! It's pretty awesome.

The next couple weeks I have a school break and the days are packed with stuff so look out for my next post!