I'm really supposed to be writing one of my final two essays for university, but here I am wandering around the travelpod site instead, so I may as well be productive at something and write an entry.
I'm finally finishing university after more than four years! Woohoo! Well, I will if I get around to finishing these essays... never mind.
So we're leaving in less than three months! I have my visa. A lady from the British High Commission called me on my mobile on a random Saturday afternoon a few weeks after my stressed email, offering to process my visa over the phone. I was walking around the Central Markets in town near Ian's house, which was hardly the ideal place to be yelling out my bank details, but I wanted that visa done. It's done!
I sent some reject passport photos with my visa application - I looked shiny and haggard and I didn't want that on my passport - but visa photos are just for records, right?
Not for the UK. The photo is smack bang in the middle of my visa. I hope I don't have to send a copy with job applications, they'll take a look and say "We don't want such a shiny haggard looking woman here!"
My passport photo isn't too glamorous either but I figure when I get off a long-distance flight and present my passport at customs I look hideously tired and wretched, so if I had a flash photo they might think it's not me.
Ian's yet to get his visa and has to get it all processed by Cambridge and the High Commission. From my experience with scholarships I've been telling him to get on to them about getting it organised, which he's doing anyway and it's probably stressing him out more me mentioning it, so I'll stop.
But the plan is to get to Cambridge in early September, find a place to stay before the hordes of students arrive, and then go lie on a beach in cheap Eastern Europe for a couple of weeks before the action starts.
And we're going to the snow for a week, here in Australia, just before we go! It had been a vague plan, I've been dying to go since getting back from Canada. But I had ruled it out due to my struggle to save up just for England, let alone a frivolous Australian ski trip!
Ian, being the top bloke that he is, took pity on me scaping together my meagre part-time student income whilst he revels in the glory of a prosperous job and fancy scholarship. He took me out for dinner the other week and gave a card with those thistly blowy flower things on the front, which inside said something along the lines of "blow and wish for something you've been wanting".
Being the loser that I am, thinking this was a newfangled heat-activated card I sat there blowing on this card. Ian thought this was hilarious and explained it was just a metaphor and I should think of what I have been wanting.
Having resigned myself to not going to the snow before the UK it didn't even occur to me... I don't think I actually came up with anything. (I'm so content! Still that's better than saying something else expectantly and having Ian's surprise come crashing down).
He eventually told me and I was ecstatic... I'm now more excited about going to the snow than going to Europe! We're going to Falls Creek for a week, about a fortnight before we leave for England!
Speaking of random other holidays, I went to Canberra earlier this year for work, Ian joined me for the weekend. Some photos are attached. Plus to lighten it up, a few from other random events this year.
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