End of Week 1

Well, it's past midnight so I've officially been in the US of A for an entire week.  I feel like I've accomplished very little but I do know now a lot more of what I cannot do, in terms of immigration rules and visas, so I just have to figure out what I can do to get things sorted.  I've spoken to US Citizen and Immigration Services, the Auckland US Consulate and the National Visa Center.  From all this I have concluded that: I need some legal advice.

In less bureaucratic news, I started painting the kitchen wall today.  Part of the aforementioned wall had to be removed to access the plumbing so that old copper pipes could be replaced by new, longer-lasting, plastic pipes.  Actually, technically speaking, I didn't do any painting today.  I was busy wiping the extra plaster off the parts that didn't need plastering and then sanding the rest down smooth.  It's not a huge area to deal with but I foolishly didn't cover my head and got fine dust all over my hair and face.  It was almost comical to look in the bathroom mirror and see horizontal lines of white powder running down from the bridge of my nose.  I guess dark circles are good for something and that something happens to be catching dust.  Who would have thought it?  The reason that I was roped into this house repair project is that, the other day when future-in-law was helping us move the things we weren't allowed to move from our room without him and mounting the TV on the wall (and I'm still not sure about having a TV in a bedroom but this will basically be like our 1 room flat which is a sanctuary away from the antiques), I accidentally confessed that my father was a house painter when future-in-law asked me if I could paint.  I don't really mind doing it, he is doing a lot for me and fiancé, but sanding is one of those menial tasks which is unlikely to be enjoyed by many.  I am certainly not a huge fan of it myself.

The room that we're staying in is on the way to being, but isn't quite yet, habitable.  We have an annoying situation where suitcases full of clothes, and other bags, are taking up space so there's little room to move around.  But, frustratingly, we can't unpack until we have somewhere to put all these belongings.  One of the set of drawers that we would like to use for this room are next door in what used to be fiancé's bedroom but has become the tenth storage room (1. attic 2. basement 3. garage 4. first storage locker 5. second storage locker 6. front room 7. TV room 8. dining room 9. future-in-law's office room).  To remove the draws we would have to clear a path because the floor is covered in boxes and piles of stuff and things, remove all the ornaments, lamps and etcetera from the top of the drawers, empty and remove the draws or just carry them with their contents next door and then move the frame out and somehow fit it through the door to our room which has the doorway partially obstructed by an overflowing bookshelf (which is not ours nor are its contents).  Fiancé thinks it's impossible or, at the very least, close enough to impossible for him not to want to bother.  I tend to agree with him.  The lesson of the day seems to be; make do with what you have.  And make do we shall.

It hasn't been all bureaucrats and moving boxes, though.  Fiancé and I did get to the movies the other day to see Rise of The Planet of the Apes.  I enjoyed it but I probably wouldn't pay to see it twice.  I've also been cooking a lot more than I have in the last several months.  Tonight I made couscous with dried fruit and pistachio nuts.  I found it delicious but fiancé was not so enthused.  He decided he would like it better with brown sugar and apple sauce - which can easily be arranged - but this does mean that I have to finish his portion.  Woe unto me.  It's calling me now so I'd best deal to it.

Day 2 and 3

In the afternoon when we woke up, almost 24 hours after our arrival, we found that the van we needed to use to buy groceries had 1 slightly flat tyre and 1 dramatically flat tyre.  Now, back in Wellington I could have hopped on the bus, called a taxi or simply walked down to the corner store of the centre of town.  Not so in the urban sprawl of this town.  Taxis have to be pre-arranged the day before, buses don't even service the area and there are no footpaths along the roads we would need to walk to get to any store.  We ended up ordering Chinese food because they delivered and because I thought that would be slightly less painful on my sensitive stomach than pizza.  It wasn't much.  It was ridiculously amusing to me, however, that Chinese food here does actually come in those white cardboard boxes with the wire handle just like in American Sit-Coms.  It also came with 5 complimentary fortune cookies; apparently I "will make changes before winning" and I have been advised to "Do the right thing because it is right.  Have the courage to face it.".


We ended up making a quick store run just before the store closed at 11pm because the future-in-law got home and let us use his car around then.  The next day we set about moving all the analogue TVs out of the room we have claimed as an antique-free zone and moving fiancé's computer into the aforementioned room so that it could actually be used (there was no room to stand in front of it - let alone sit - in his old bedroom come antique storage room) and then we were told not to move anything else until future-in-law was home to tell us where it was to go so we stopped.

Again, it was hard to wake up at a reasonable hour the next day so today I got out of bed just as future-in-law was heading off on a trip out of town for 2 days.  It just so happened that this was the exact same moment that the pump which brings water from the underground well that provides the water-supply for this house decided to break.  We have had no running water for over twelve hours.  Now, the fact that future-in-law is out of town isn't the worst part of this.  Tomorrow is July 4 - USA's "Independence Day" - which means, effectively, that we will be without water until Tuesday 5 July at the very least.  More than likely, all of the service people who we could call to come out to fix the pump are away on holiday out of town.  We've left messages for two separate companies, at least 1 of which advertises 24 hour service, and have heard nothing back for almost 12 hours.  I shall never take running water for granted again.

At least I can credit my "ghetto" (in the words of fiancé) upbringing as useful for helping us through this situation - we'll ask for some buckets of water from the neighbours tomorrow and do the good old bucket flush for the toilets then boil some for doing the dishes that are piling up and washing ourselves a bit.  One of the things I was looking forward to about living here was that I would have improved living conditions.  The Fates, it seems, are not without their sense of irony.