Work visa donations accepted here.

I thought I had a work visa but I’m only half way there.  To get a full work visa I need two contracts offering me work.  I have one and need to find one more university that will offer me a contract.  This still puts me back in the Catch 22 situation that universities don’t want to give contracts until you have the full visa.

The Anthony Robbins in me says that now is a time to rise to the challenge and polish up the CV and keep hitting the institutions and universities and show them what an asset I am.  Want to buy my book?

The last couple of days we’ve been buying school books in a stationary shop (librere).  There are two options, pack your own list or let the shop do it for you.  Due to language issues and length of the book list we opt for the latter.  Most shops have an assistant that gathers the goods, they tell you the amount, then you walk over to a cashier while your books are given to a third person to package up.  You give your receipt to this third person in exchange for your purchase.

Certain books have to have, by decree of most schools, a plastic jacket custom built for them.  There are street vendors all up and down El Plan offering the service of sealing books in plastic so they can last 500 years.  These book sealers don’t set up in front of the librere, where you think they’d get the most trade.  Brings back memories of the last days of summer holidays wrapping school books in brown paper.

The school has asked us to fill in a form for Truce.  Part of the information is to do with health.  It’s easy and cheap to buy fresh fruit and vegetables but by the same token it’s also cheap to buy a packet of biscuits.  The school is aware that childhood obesity is on the rise as can be seen by the last question on the form.

We were in the equivalent to a dollar shop looking for a few essentials for the kitchen, peeler, grater, a sharp knife that can harm a tomato – the usual.  The shop keeper was so taken with the girls that he gave each of them a coffee mug as a gift (regalo).  We don’t have a pool room to display them in but Indiana and Truce were very excited with their regalos.

On the weekend we met up with one of our readers. The reader saw our blog and sent us an email saying she'd like to meet and help us with our Spanish.  She has a son a little younger than Indiana and they sort of played together at the park.  You know how dangerous girl's germs are.

Once again we've been shown how welcoming the people of Valpo are and it was very touching to have a complete stranger make such a kind gesture.