Goodbyes & Move Appointments

The goodbyes are starting.

This Tuesday was my last normal meeting with my wonderful Australian prayer partner (who's moving to Cairo at the same time I move to Zürich), and then there was a last little neighbourhood coffee for just a few of the (mostly) ex-pat internationals to see each other again. Two of us from our street are leaving (two Americans; a third already moved to another town nearby and she came back to see us).

Today was the last meeting of an international ladies' Bible study, with a culminating luncheon afterwards. I hadn't been for weeks due to all that has been going on. I was one of about 5 people there moving away (to Singapore, California, Washington DC, and another U.S. city I didn't quite catch). We were each given a little ceramic cross with "I am the Vine, John 15:5" painted on it - because the group is called "Grapevine." It's a great reminder of the rest of that verse, which says "you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." I so need to cling to Him and abide in Him through the next year (as always, but more so every day).

Next week I will go for the last time to my other local British church Bible study to say goodbye, and it's also the final luncheon for my school prayer group.

Yesterday I had the amazing experience of putting our car up for sale on a UK national car sales website, and agreeing to sell it about 4 hours later to a nice-seeming family with four kids who drove an hour to see it. They won't pick it up until three weeks from now, but gave us a cash deposit for us to be able to take the ad off the website. The speed of this transaction was unprecedented. They will do an electronic bank transfer which will need to clear before we hand over the car. In France we sold our two cars the same way (with a national French website). Very handy. So anyway, goodbye soon to the lovely little Toyota Corolla Verso, so versatile as its name implies...the trunk can convert into two more seats (to make 7 total), and the rear 5 seats can also all lie flat to carry large items. I hope we can get something similar in Switzerland. It was our first time having a 7-seater.

And as for moving appointments, this week I got estimates from move-out cleaning companies, today a guy came round to do an electrical safety check of the house that was required before the new tenants move in, and tomorrow the moving company sends an estimator to find out whether it'll take them one day or two to pack us up.

We're waiting on the new rental house contract to come through, and making an appointment at the U.S. Consulate in Zürich for soon after we arrive to get an affidavit as to our clean criminal record, which some say we need for registering in our new town of residence there (some disagree, but we'd rather be safe and have too much documentation than be missing what we need). Still trying to learn a tiny bit more German daily...

P.S. Just so you know, the photo has nothing to do with this post. It's the Royal Standard flying over Windsor Castle, which indicates that the Queen is in residence - otherwise the Union Jack (the British flag) would be flying. I took this back when the grandparents were here visiting and we toured the castle. Just thought I'd throw in a nice cheery photo. I suppose you could say it's a "goodbye to England" shot, although we have probably exactly a month left here as of today.