Everyone keeps asking me how I'm feeling, now that it's all getting really close, but only one person has hit on how I do feel. Stew, my stepdad, asked me if I was nervous. YES, I'm nervous. So many people have asked if I'm excited, but I'm actually not. There's so much else to tidy up before I can even think about getting excited, and things like leaving my job are strangely stressful. You kind of imagine that finishing up in a job will be a really nice feeling and that everything's going to be easy and rosy and everyone's going to be hugging you and crying, but that's certainly not the way it's going for me. Hugh and I are both working really long hours - him more so than me, to be fair - and because we're doing everything together at the moment and I'm getting him to figure things out for himself, it all (quite naturally) takes a bit longer. He is doing a good job though, he has a very naturally fair and honest and nice way with people, and he'll be absolutely fine without me. Also, I think most people at work have kind of forgotten that I'm going, or not realised just how soon it is or SOMETHING because there sure don't seem to be many people who are particularly bothered! It's only just over two weeks until I finish at work now, it feels very soon.
So I went back to the Russian Embassy on Monday morning. It was howling a freaking gale up in the hills in Karori, and I just about got blown away with the door, trying to get it shut behind me. There were a group of people already there, and this little old lady started talking to me in Russian. I kind of smiled and shrugged, as you do when you don't know that you share any language with someone, and so she carried on talking to me in Russian. I was feeling pretty awkward by this stage cos she was obviously going to expect a slightly more verbal response at some stage, but luckily one of the other people there cut in and said something to her in Russian, and she turned around and said something else to me in Russian, which I HAD STUDIED ENOUGH to understand!!!!!!!! She was asking if I was not Russian. So I said "no" in Russian, which I also remembered, and she asked again, more disbelievingly, and I said no again, and she asked again, and I said no again, and then she asked something else and everyone in the room just about died laughing, except me cos I didn't understand that bit. Then her friend told me she'd asked why I wasn't Russian. Which kind of set the tone for the next hour and a half. The old Russian lady was hilarious, and the people she was with all spoke really good English and so they'd all translate for me. She was talking about things like going to get her passport photos done in Australia cos it's too expensive in New Zealand. Anyway, long story short, I spent an hour and a half sitting around at the Russian Embassy, talking to the other people who were waiting, to find out that my visa is perfectly fine. At the very bottom of it, like on your passport photo page, they have lots of arrows and letters and numbers. What I thought was probably meant to be my name read "JEQMS LAURA MARJORI". But they assure me that so long as everything else on the visa is right, then it won't be a problem.
I went to the doctor too. There's nothing wrong with my eyesight, and he suggested that next time I get my license renewed I go to a different place to do it. He was surprised that they checked my eyesight in the first place because he didn't think they did that until you were a senior citizen.
Haven't managed to get the car wrecked yet though. I went to the place in the central city, and they only take cars at their outlet in Ngauranga Gorge. I can probably walk to my house from there, in well under 45 minutes, so it's nowhere near as far out of town as any of the other scrap metal yards. This is important for two reasons: 1. Last time I tried to drive to Petone (10min up the motorway) my car overheated before I got there and I had to sit on the side of the road for an hour waiting for it to cool down. 2. I don't have to try to find an alternative means of transport back into town once I have Done The Deed. And, bonus, they seem to buy cars for a pretty good price - $220 per tonne, and the guy I was talking to guessed my car would be about 700kg. Most of the places I looked at pay $100 for any car.
By the way, I promise that when I get overseas I will start putting photos on this page, instead of just massively long stream-of-consciousness posts!
You look Russian already! Strong work!
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