Tag: spanish translation

The Review

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Today, I woke up bone tired. It could be the fact that we’re now sleeping on an air mattress, but we’ve been going for days, and I needed coffee. So I made a café con leche from the precious beans I have left, and I reviewed the list I made back in September of all the things we needed to do to move to Spain.

Back then, the list seemed like it was never ending. On a daily basis I was adding, rather than checking off. But the excitement was palpable. I was optimistic and, of course, we had 6 months to do it all. Plenty of time – Easy Peasy!Countdown

The review today revealed just how much we have gotten done since then. Something to celebrate! All the visa hoops, sure. But also, renting an apartment, getting a lawyer, etc. None of that was on the list when I started it – and all of it has been done. They’re painting our apartment in Valencia this week and the appliances are being ordered. Even our utilities are being hooked up in our name. Check, check, check.

And now the list has only 12 things left unchecked. Sure – they’re some big things, like our consulate appointment, doing our taxes and selling two cars. But 12 lines nonetheless. I added a calendar count down app to my phone and it’s just 42 days away. That’s 3.5 days per item. Of course, that means nothing. Things don’t get done that way, but it feels better reducing it all to math. I can touch and feel numbers, and the abstractions of ‘to-do’s’ starts to feel less nebulous.

This week, our international shipper will do a FaceTime inventory so we can get a realistic and final estimate. And I’ll try to work out how we’ll get rid of the odds and ends we have left in the house – maybe an old fashioned garage sale! Checking all my alerts, the cost of plane tickets for the 28th of February have plummeted, so I’m itching to book those after our consulate appointment February 5th. Today we paid our translator and by Monday of next week, all our translations will arrive. Then I’ll make photo copies of our packets and put them into snazzy folders. Tick tock.

I just sent the whittled down version of what we have left to do, to Jeff at work. I haven’t heard back from him yet, and I’m not sure he can see how far we’ve come in the last 6 months, but I thought it was important for him to have visibility into where we are. The final 42 days will not be a walk in the park, but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel and I believe it’s not a freight train but will open up to a bright future!

Dancing in the Rain

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As humans, we’ve survived because we have been able to evolve and adapt. The people on this planet today – all of us – are a result of DNA that has been resilient enough to make small changes, allowing us to survive long enough to procreate or at least, not get eaten by a sabretooth tiger. We are all a testament to this process.

So I started looking at ways I might make small changes to my approach. ‘OK’ I said to myself. ‘So you can’t force that document to come back from the State Department fully apostillized tomorrow, or even next week. But what can you do?’

So I reached out to my translator and made a proposal. What if I sent her the copy I have of these FBI background checks? It’s not apostillized, but the words are the same. She could prepare the translation – one less thing for her to translate when they come back from Washington DC. She said that was a great idea so I sent them off to her.

She also told me something else that I read no where else, and wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t made my proposal. Sometimes, the State Department sends back the Apostle and it’s already in Spanish, French and English. This would mean I wouldn’t need the Apostle translated at all. She said not to count on this for sure – but that she’s seen that before.

And all of a sudden, it’s just one more reminder that where there is a will, there’s a way. That in the end, you gotta make your own weather. Forward motion needs to be maintained. So today is a good day. I have no idea if we’ll make our appointment on the 29th. But I will have done everything – absolutely everything – to make that happen.

Its raining outside, I have a full cup of Spanish coffee and I’m spending the day writing my book. Bliss. Sometimes, in the middle of the storm – you gotta go out and dance in the rain. And that’s what I intend to do.