Well, this seems familiar. Once more we are facing a delay of our original departure date! We had naively thought we would depart Canada for France in late June. Well, to apply for a long-term visa for France one has to actually fill out an application form online which results in you being assigned a date on which an interview for the visa takes place. The form to fill out is multi-page, and each page would stall for us as there was some detail being asked fo that we didn’t have, or know if it applied to us. We would write to a few places to try to get answers and most time the replies were not that helpful. So back to form online and voila, suddenly we could go to teh next page even htough the missing info wasn’t supplied. So, is it needed? Or no? Will we find out at the interview?

Anyway, at the end of this online application form the final pop up window tells me that there is a 30 day wait between the completion of this form and the actual interview. WHAT?? If this had been the first pop-up or shared bit of info we would have gone through it much more speedily.

As it is, our visa interviews take place July 18. Each of us gets 30 minutes. Even Liberty and Van. There is a lengthy list of things we need to bring, but the details missing from the online form worry me. Please pray about this.

we have been able to visit Hamilton harbour, and take lovely bike rides here and there. Each time we stay here as the kids grow older they discover more things about Canada. For example, we have usually had a car when we are home, but not this time. This has meant taking the bus… just like in China! But we’ve never taken the bus here and at first it seemed trickier than China. In China you just sort of barge onto the bus and toss money at the driver. Here, people are in lines, they move slowly onto the bus, and the bus drivers are friendly. Wow, what a change.

We all miss the lively street activity you can find in China, but here we’ve enjoyed the odd fun thing, like face painting at a restaurant! There was a lady giving free face paintings to any kid who wanted it. Of course our kids did!