Caught in the Rain!

This morning we got up early again and went to town with Bruce. We went first thing to the immigration office with the updated paperwork in hand, including the diplomas which our wonderful family found in our file in storage, scanned and emailed to us. We saw a different person and she was more favorable with the paperwork we brought in. She said we needed copies of some of them (since Mark and I are applying for separate visas, we each needed a copy of each document for our own visa). She also wanted a marriage certificate which hadn’t been mentioned before but Mark had a copy of it on his computer that he had scanned previously. So we told her we’d be back in an hour with the paperwork.

We ran back to the house, printed out copies of the necessary documents and ran back to the office (it’s about 15 – 20 drive one way). Amazingly, the power went off as we were printing but the Ferdinandos (whose house we are living in) have this wonderful back-up battery system. Mark just flipped it on and we continued printing! When we returned to the Immigration Office, the same lady was at the counter. She looked at the documents and told us that they would have to be reviewed and that our visas would be ready on Friday! Bruce was shocked. He said that no one he knows has ever gotten them approved that fast!

We then had time to go buy a car battery for Keith Ferdinando’s car (Keith and Margaret are not only letting stay in their furnished house but also they said we could use their car) and to get the insurance updated. It all went smoothly and we had time to kill before picking the kids up from school so Bruce dropped us off at a new supermarket (Nakumatt – a chain store from Kenya, Africa’s answer to Wal-Mart) in town for us to look around. We said we’d walk up the hill and meet him at the corner at the kids’ school. As we were leaving the store, the wind picked up dramatically and it was starting to sprinkle. Mark thought we could make a dash for it and get to the school but we only got across the street and down a little before it began to absolutely downpour (California never sees rain like this). We dashed into an alcove of a store where some others were standing as well. It was a pretty good place to stand except that the wind was so strong it blew the rain right at us at times. The front of us was soaked from the waist down! Mark called Bruce and he was able to come by and pick us up. By the time he got there the rain had subsided quite a bit.

After changing we again had a nice lunch with the Bonvallats. This time Emily stayed longer in the afternoon and played with the boys outside. I told them they had to teach her French. Mark went back over later and helped Gilles work on a problem with his car.

We were able to finish unpacking this evening although we don’t have a place for everything yet. Some things we put back into suitcases for now. We made the discovery that one item is missing from our luggage unless we accidently put into Emily’s duffle bag which we left at RVA. It is the comforter for our bed. It is not an essential nor very expensive item, it just would have been nice to have as it wasn’t that old and we liked it. Oh, well. We are thankful all of Mark's tools made it.

Good night for now!