So How Is It Going?

So far so good, but it's taking a while to get  settled in. As I mentioned earlier shopping excursions take forever so by the time I get us up, fed, out the door and then home from a shop, the day is almost over and I am exhausted anyway so organizing around the house is taking longer than it should - and most of you know I'm not really good at it anyway ; ) In many ways this move has been much easier than the move from Boston - all of our furniture and belongings arrived at the same time as us, so we're not scrambling around looking for things we may have left behind. We're almost in the same time zone (an hour later than Dublin, so 6 hours different from the East Coast), so no jet lag. And most importantly is that we have a car and a GPS so at least we have been able to get out and explore. When we arrived here one of our first trips was to the rental car company. The relocation guy (I'll start calling him by his name which is Michal) brought us there so we could rent a car until we were able to get a car for our long-term lease, which was supposed to be in 2-3 weeks. After the rental car guy spoke with Michal, brought us out to look at the car and then back inside to do the paperwork, it was discovered that we didn't have International Driver's Licenses. In Dublin we just drove on our US licenses, I think we were only supposed to do that for a year or two, but in order to get an Irish license we had to first get learner's permits which meant we couldn't drive after 9pm, couldn't drive on major highways, etc. - then we had to take a written and a driving test so we didn't want to deal with that. I've been driving for 25 years so I didn't want to start from square one! So we tempted fate and fortunately never got caught - and we never got an international one because we never needed it. So long story short we had to leave that rental car company and the next day Mike and Michal went to one at the airport where they didn't require an international license (but is much more expensive). In the meantime I filled out an application for an IDL that I found on the AAA website since I assumed it was at least a legitimate license. Turns out you can't apply and pay online and it would have taken 4-6 weeks to receive it back so I googled international licenses and applied for the first one I saw (which was also the one I thought an American woman I met here told me she had).  I just received them in the mail today so hopefully we can get a different car ASAP because the one we are driving now smells funny.

Things at the house are taking a while though - our landlords don't speak a word of English so one of the first days here they came over with their daughter who speaks broken English in order to explain thing at the house (where the gas meter is, how to use the oven, etc). My first concern was getting internet set up at the house, they explained that we would have to choose a new plan so later that afternoon the daughter came back with three options - I texted her back that night telling her which one we wanted (it included phone, TV, and internet). They had mentioned that since the line hadn't been used in a while it would take 5-7 days to get up and running (or at least I think that's what they said/meant as the daughter's English isn't great). After a week I was getting antsy so I asked Michal to check on it and when he spoke to the landlord she mentioned something about needing a 'Livebox' to get things connected. The day after that the daughter went to the office to pick up the box and the next day we had a technician come to the house to set it up (which took 3 hours!). I was just really annoyed because it seemed like all we needed was this Livebox so why didn't they tell us about this first?? It was especially frustrating because there is a big soccer tournament going on in Poland right now (the Euro 2012, like the World Cup but only with European teams) and we were dying to watch the games. Plus Mike McNally came to visit us from Boston specifically for this reason and we couldn't even watch the games at our house!! We ended up going back to the Sheraton a couple of times to watch it. Mike's boss from Dublin Sean and his son Oisin also came to visit since they had gotten tickets to the Ireland/Italy match is Poznan. I don't think anyone realized how far away that was until we got here and started talking to people - it's not that far distance-wise but I guess the roads aren't great so people had said it would take anywhere from 5 to 7 hours each way. Yikes! Sean had gotten a ticket for the two Mike's as well so they took off on Monday morning and the kids and I checked into the Sheraton for the night so we could watch the game (and also so the kids could go swimming at the hotel. Okay, okay, also because I am a wimp and I don't like to stay home alone...). We were hoping to catch a glimpse of everyone in the crowd but we didn't spot anyone one TV. Apparently when Sean got back to Dublin he discovered that Oisin was all over the papers, and online - he even made it to the Boston Herald! Here is the link
http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/soccer/general/view/20120618fans_take_starring_role_as_ireland_bows_out

Also one afternoon that we were all out on the square Sean noticed the English team run into the basement of the restaurant next to us so he grabbed his camera and he and Oisin went inside.

The boys didn't get back from Poznan until 5 am so it was a long day for them. And thankfully now we have internet at the house so we can watch the games, we bought Apple TV so we are able to watch it on our big screen TV because it picks up the signal from the ipad. We had also brought over some Sky boxes with us (Sky was our satellite service in Dublin) and got them set up only to discover that Sky sports wasn't showing any of the games. Figures! At least we have TV in English now, we haven't really been watching it but I know I saw Law and Order and CSI listed so that's all I need - and the news. We still don't have regular TV which is fine because it's all in Polish anyway, we only wanted to connect it to pick up the games. And our house phone was working when we moved in but once we connected the Livebox is stopped working and who knows when that will be fixed. We also ordered a water cooler for the house 3 weeks ago and it finally got delivered today. It seems like we're just doing a lot of waiting around, but soon enough we'll get everything sorted out (hopefully).