After a successful year of study, in which John, my husband had applied for student exchange, we heard that his application had been successful and that he'd been accepted to study for the Spring semester at UNCG in Greensboro, North Carolina.
We gave ourselves one day of celebration and then the serious work of preparing for our trip and stay had to happen in between saying goodbye to family and friends. John had started working on his proposal and copying and downloading part of the million books he had to read for his thesis, so I started the planning for the household goods to be placed in storage and the house to be cleaned before the agent's inspection. Our planner stuck to the study wall painted a grim picture of all the deadlines ahead. It was close to the festive season and cleaning companies were closing down so the latest date I could have was 20 Dec for the apartment to be cleaned. So the movers had to come and pack up and take everything to storage the day before. Doing the itinerary was a nightmare as I kept forgetting to add things and we had so many things.
As we would still be living in the apartment till 28 Dec when our flights were booked, we needed to make sure the packers and movers didn't remove everything. We still needed chairs, tables, picnic set, our cases, cooler box and a few other things to remain behind. These were all packed into one of the bathrooms and my mom had to make sure nobody went in there. She made a good policeman. I was still recovering from my shoulder op and my mom really helped me so much. A real star.
So with everything out of the house except the things we would still need, we had to buy a blow-up bed to sleep on. The very first night it went flat twice in the night. We were so tired and really needed a good nights sleep, so off we went and I wanted two foam mattresses to sleep on but John insisted that we buy two single blow-ups that cost us R1600 each and inflated to about 3cm's. His motto, if you don't have time, throw money at it. The only problem with these was that it was very difficult to get up off the floor with only one arm, the other still stuck in the sling and at my age, I need to get up at least twice a night some nights more depending on whether I had red wine or not.
We had the cooler box to keep milk, cheese and ham in for lunches or dinners and John bought bowls of pre-packed oats for breakfast that just needed boiled water added. The cooler box had to be topped up with ice every day but it actually kept everything nice and cool and none of our food was spoilt. Most mornings we had this oats but some mornings we went to Mugg & Bean for breakfast just for some variety. It was one of these mornings that I managed to overturn my cup of coffee which spread over the whole table and Johns laptop was on there. This caused some water damage and so after phoning Outsurance we went to Somerset Mall to the Istore to try and get a damage report for the insurance company. Of course, they wouldn't do it as you first need to make an appointment and even though we explained to them that we were flying out two days later, protocol had to be maintained. So the insurance company agreed that we could get the damage report from an Istore in USA and that we would still be covered as claim was made before the cancellation date which was 31 Dec.
That too passed and the morning of inspection arrived. The night before I had tried to remove the planner from the study wall and it stripped two patches of paint off the wall. All I could think of was "there goes our deposit." The inspection went well and our agent was over the moon at how well we had taken care of the place. She gushed over the clean oven, even showing it off to the new tenant. She kept on saying that she had never seen such a clean stove and oven after five years of use and I used that stove every day, made my honey mustard glazed gammon in that oven often. So at the end of all that, the wall cost us R500 to fix.
On advice from Sarah at Internation Student exchange, we were advised to make copies of all important docs and have the copies certified, which we did. My friend Beverley, who was also going to take care of our car, was supposed to get a certified copy and we had to have a certified copy with us. She kindly took us to the airport but all three of us forgot about the copies. Luckily my daughter Beverley, named after my best friend, of course, had come with Randall her hubby and Declan, my grandson to see us off and we could give her the pack of documents to give to my friend.
That ended off two months of intense planning and preparation for our move to Greensboro.
Never a dull moment.
We gave ourselves one day of celebration and then the serious work of preparing for our trip and stay had to happen in between saying goodbye to family and friends. John had started working on his proposal and copying and downloading part of the million books he had to read for his thesis, so I started the planning for the household goods to be placed in storage and the house to be cleaned before the agent's inspection. Our planner stuck to the study wall painted a grim picture of all the deadlines ahead. It was close to the festive season and cleaning companies were closing down so the latest date I could have was 20 Dec for the apartment to be cleaned. So the movers had to come and pack up and take everything to storage the day before. Doing the itinerary was a nightmare as I kept forgetting to add things and we had so many things.
As we would still be living in the apartment till 28 Dec when our flights were booked, we needed to make sure the packers and movers didn't remove everything. We still needed chairs, tables, picnic set, our cases, cooler box and a few other things to remain behind. These were all packed into one of the bathrooms and my mom had to make sure nobody went in there. She made a good policeman. I was still recovering from my shoulder op and my mom really helped me so much. A real star.
So with everything out of the house except the things we would still need, we had to buy a blow-up bed to sleep on. The very first night it went flat twice in the night. We were so tired and really needed a good nights sleep, so off we went and I wanted two foam mattresses to sleep on but John insisted that we buy two single blow-ups that cost us R1600 each and inflated to about 3cm's. His motto, if you don't have time, throw money at it. The only problem with these was that it was very difficult to get up off the floor with only one arm, the other still stuck in the sling and at my age, I need to get up at least twice a night some nights more depending on whether I had red wine or not.
We had the cooler box to keep milk, cheese and ham in for lunches or dinners and John bought bowls of pre-packed oats for breakfast that just needed boiled water added. The cooler box had to be topped up with ice every day but it actually kept everything nice and cool and none of our food was spoilt. Most mornings we had this oats but some mornings we went to Mugg & Bean for breakfast just for some variety. It was one of these mornings that I managed to overturn my cup of coffee which spread over the whole table and Johns laptop was on there. This caused some water damage and so after phoning Outsurance we went to Somerset Mall to the Istore to try and get a damage report for the insurance company. Of course, they wouldn't do it as you first need to make an appointment and even though we explained to them that we were flying out two days later, protocol had to be maintained. So the insurance company agreed that we could get the damage report from an Istore in USA and that we would still be covered as claim was made before the cancellation date which was 31 Dec.
That too passed and the morning of inspection arrived. The night before I had tried to remove the planner from the study wall and it stripped two patches of paint off the wall. All I could think of was "there goes our deposit." The inspection went well and our agent was over the moon at how well we had taken care of the place. She gushed over the clean oven, even showing it off to the new tenant. She kept on saying that she had never seen such a clean stove and oven after five years of use and I used that stove every day, made my honey mustard glazed gammon in that oven often. So at the end of all that, the wall cost us R500 to fix.
On advice from Sarah at Internation Student exchange, we were advised to make copies of all important docs and have the copies certified, which we did. My friend Beverley, who was also going to take care of our car, was supposed to get a certified copy and we had to have a certified copy with us. She kindly took us to the airport but all three of us forgot about the copies. Luckily my daughter Beverley, named after my best friend, of course, had come with Randall her hubby and Declan, my grandson to see us off and we could give her the pack of documents to give to my friend.
That ended off two months of intense planning and preparation for our move to Greensboro.
Never a dull moment.
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