Finally official!!

Yesterday I received our passport back after being without them for one month.  Talk about a disconcerting feeling; being in a “real” foreign country, not speaking the language, not understanding the culture and with no passport.  A Great start to our Shanghai experience?!  So you can imagine how relieved I was to have them back with all the required registrations and stamps.  This is just in time for me to leave the country as I will head for France, Germany and Austria this weekend.

Our adventure with getting our residency permit reminded me of the experience that Tommy had when he tried to do this in Botswana.  He went through a lot more travel and frustration than we did but we experienced the anxiety that I am sure he experienced as well.  Fortunately we have a great admin at work that speaks great English and is very helpful.  “Ralph” has been our god send, he really helped us through this process and reassured us when it seemed that I would not have them back in time to make my trip this weekend.

The added twist for us was the “Health certificate” that we needed before the process could begin.  It was a complete physical and needless to say Catharine and I passed but we received the comment that we had a slightly fatty liver and should change our lifestyle; their nice way of saying that all Americans are FAT!..

So if it were not for the fact that we are running out of money, we could finally settle in.  What a pain this whole money thing is.  I wrote earlier about having to go through hoops to get enough money to pay our deposit and 1^st months rent for the apartment (IN CASH) but now my company is finding every excuse to not start paying my salary or reimburse my living expenses.  It is the little things LIKE RUNNING OUT OF MONEY!! That keeps you up at night. Actually we should be able to survive until mid April if we are not faced with unexpected expenses.

Since they really don’t have credit cards here they don’t really accept out of country credit cards except at big expensive stores, and hotels.  We do have a debit card from our local bank but it is not possible to set up direct payments so each month we have to go get a bag of cash and pay our rent. 

Once we get over this “funding issue”  I am sure that life here will be great, just too many things to worry about right now.  I wrestle with this because we are so much more fortunate that most the people living here and certainly the people of Japan have much bigger issues than we do.  It makes you stop and think about the things that really matter. 

Our house is really nice and it is nice to be settling in.  I hope now I will be able to find time to start learning a little of the language; that would make me feel a lot better as well.  The trip to and from work varies from 15-25 minutes but that is pretty good as it is less than I had when I was working and now somebody else is driving.  I am actually writing this on the way to work.  I have finally come up with a great idea for what to do with all the extra space in our house; I bought a RC car and now I can turn the lower level into a race car track.  The car is very fast and I am having fun learning how to control it.  I have already had my first bad crash and I had to replace on of the servos.  Oh well that is just part of the learning curve.