inch vs mile

Confirmation has come through regarding Maddie's medical, and NZIS are now happy that she doesn't pose any financial risk to the already precarious New Zealand economy.

This is obviously a massive relief to us all as it now means that all obstacles have been removed and that the relevant visas can now be processed. Well, they will be once all documents have been compiled and have been reviewed by someone other than our visa officer to ensure that all is present and correct. This is likely to be nothing more than a formality but, well, we're still a distance (albeit a small one) from the final, absolute, gratifying long awaited "yes!". Let's just say we're 99.9% of the way there...

The most frustrating aspect of the delays is that it's hard to move on and organise flights, accomodation, house-buying and school enrollment without knowing an exact date of departure. We've already revised our likely leaving date as now somewhere around the 20th december, but until I get the tickets booked (and these will be the hideously expensive and scarce tickets due to the popular time we'll be travelling) we're still in limbo.

However, we did get some good news regarding accomodation today; a holiday home we enquired about in the Christchurch suburbs has been offered to us for free on the condition that we feed the cats, doves and horses. Apparently the owner is just pleased that a family with kids will be around to do this, and the girls will be absolutely ecstatic about the horses. The house will also be big enough to accomodate our NZ friends who will be coming to stay for Christmas. Which is great.