Getting ready to fly!

It would appear that our time of waiting is rapidly coming to an end.  We fly a week from today and this knowledge fills us all with both excitement and dread!  We're so excited to be starting a new and adventurous life together.  A life in which we hope to have lots of time and fun together, and getting to know what life in Canada is now like.  Being with old friends and with the other set of grandparents...these are all great things to look forward to.  And blizzards!  I can't wait for a good blizzard.  But not, I pray, on the day of our arrival!
 
On the other hand, we do not look forward to having to say goodbye to many good friends whom we are really going to miss.  Our schedule is full with meetings for one last cup of tea.  We have a lot of packing ahead of us too, and sorting and giving-away.  It will be a fantastic feeling of relief when these jobs are all done.

I was away yesterday in Vienna overnight with Elena on a mother-daughter outing and Dominik started packing.  He made a fantastic start, actually.  The best packing tool so far is the idea of 'vacuum-packing' items.  Dominik has 8 feather pillows and one large feather duvet in plastic vacuum bags and I am truly amazed at how small they are now!  Wow! 

The children have only 3 more days of school ahead of them.  It does them credit that they are still doing their homework!  Jonathan's math teacher has given him the option of writing his math exam or not, but I don't know that Rebecca's english teacher did the same!  That will be on Friday, her last day of school.  What a going-away present! 

This is short but there's not much else to say just now!  The end is near, the house is a mess, and the packing continues! See you soon!

Waiting.....

Well, here we are with a new title and a new look!  This should get us all ready for our new life (we hope) in Canada.  Now, I'm Canadian and even though all the kids have been born in Austria and are fully Austrian, they also carry Canadian citizenship.  We can move to Canada in a heartbeat if we wanted to.  BUT.  We wouldn't ever do that without my husband, an Austrian.  And so we are waiting for his permanent residency visa.  We applied in March and finally, about 3 weeks ago, our online status says 'Decision Made'.  But what decision is that?  Well, it has to be positive really.  So we are waiting to be informed in writing of the decision.  And we have to have this decision in hand before we book a flight.

Our boxes are packed.  Things have been claimed and given away.  We have boxes in storeage at my in-laws.  We've moved into a much smaller flat in anticipation of moving.  We are very eager to get to Canada to be able to look at land before the snow flies.  And November is coming!  This lesson in patience is sometimes hard.  But we know that God has this all in his hands and we rely on that.  Still, you know.  Waiting!  The two older kids came home last week eager to know if we could fly before mid-term exams began! :-)  No, not likely. 

We have all sorts of plans for our life in Canada but there's no point outlining them until we get going there.  Generally, my husband, who is a Youth Worker but was also trained as an Agricultural Teacher, will homeschool the kids and plan our garden (etc!). LARGE garden.   I will be looking for a job.  And I have some ideas about that but am waiting (again) for a response about a course first. 

We have been in Austria for 14 years now.  All the children were born here.  It will be a wrench to leave family and friends, but we also have family and friends waiting for us in Canada.  I think that the biggest challenge for me will be culture.  I'm not a real European but after so many years here I'm not totally culturally Canadian either.  But that's where family culture comes in.  We are all a blend and we just need to compliment each other.  Oh, and we'll have to build a big guest room....or two...or a bunk house.  Then everyone can come to visit!

So, this is just a quick note to let you know how things are changing.  Sorry, no photos this time!   I'll be posting another update soon.  Let's hope that I'll have some news! :-)

Gefängnis und Elekt. Zentralkraftwerk- Feld 31 Zelle 3 und Feld 4 That is: Going to Jail and the Hydroelectric Station

Endlich. Die Schule hat angefangen und unsere DKT-Reise ist noch immer nicht vorbei. Doch am Montag den 25 September konnten wir unsere Reise abschließen. Wir fuhren als erstes ins Gefängnis. Ein paar alte Zellen die man besichtigen kann. Eine Frage an alle Schüler. Würdet ihr lieber eine Woche lang in einer alten Gefängiszelle verbringen wo man einen Nachttopf einen kleinen Ofen ein Bett ein paar alte Bücher und Besteck und eine Schüssel hat, oder würdet ihr eine Woche lang in der Schule mit guten Klos warmen Klassen gemütliche Sitze (vielleicht sogar ein Sofa) und gutes warmes Essen hat? Dafür hat man acht Stunden pro Tag Unterricht. Gebt mir mal eine Rückmeldung. Also, zuerst besuchten wir das Gefängnis. Da gibt es vier Zellen und nur die Zellen 4 und 3 kann man besichtigen.

Finally, the last portion of our tour.  Even though school has started and our holiday seems to have happened a long time ago, we still had to finish the game! The only things missing from our playing board were a visit to a jail and also to and electric power station.  First we decided to go to a jail.  Fortunately this didn't actually involve getting arrested!  A friend told us that the old jail in Windischgarsten, just 20 minutes from here, was in the same building as the library, back where they store things now, and that we could visit it during the week.  Going back through where normally the staff might go, we found ourselves passing from the brightly painted foyer of the library and into the dark, poorly-lit, unheated hallway where the old cells were.  Of the 4 cells there, only one was set up as it would have been years ago. There was a bed and a desk, a shelf for some educational books and a Bible, a bucket toilet (with a lid! ;-)), and a little woodstove for heat.  Along the wooden doorframe we could see where inmates had scratced little lines in to count the days of incarceration.  It was really interesting, seeing how it would have been set up.  And, as usual, taking photos was fun!

Die letzte Sache auf unserer Reise war letztendlich der Staudamm in Klaus. Feld 4.

Finally, our very last thing to visit- a Hydro-Electric Dam.  Where might we find that?  We tried to visit the really big one in Kaprun- especially since Dominik's grandfather helped to build the dam there.  But...it was a question of time.  We hadn't realised that in Kaprun you had to park well below the dam and then either pay a bunch to take a bus up to see it, or spend a good while hiking.  Unfortunately we were on our way to the Großglocknerstraße and couldn't take the time.  This was alright for me as I'd been given some new hiking shoes and they were, as I walked about, falling apart.  I was leaving bits of sole everywhere!  So, back to this visit.  We live in Klaus an der Pyhrnbahn here in Austria, and we are blessed to have a large dam and power station right here in Klaus.  From our flat we look out onto the lake created by the dam and when we get a lot of rain we can watch the water being shot off into the river from below the dam.  This was an easy one to get, in the end, and a nice way to end our tour.

So, unsere DKT-Reise ist nun beendet. Was ist das nächste? Eine Risiko-Reise? Eine DKT-Wien-Reise? Warscheinlich nicht. ;-) Unser nächster Blog wird frühestens in ein paar Wochen sein. Bis dahin.

So, our DKT Tour is finished.  What's next for us?  A Risk Tour?  That would be something.  Or how about a DKT-Vienna tour?  Not yet.  Our next adventure is something much bigger.  We're moving to Canada!  This will be a huge adventure for us and we'll start blogging on that, and maybe vlogging as well, shortly.  Thanks for joining us!  And if you want some updates, why don't you 'Follow' us?  We'll keep posting!