ZA2009

We've been having some heavy weather. With record snowfalls followed by a lot of rain and 60 °F temperatures, we have really soggy ground. Add 50 mph winds and stir. What do you get? Trees! Down!

Nobody heard it fall, but it appears that one of our backyard trees was blown over last night. The first one downed a second, too. 

A fence is ruined, but we didn't like it anyway.

Fortunately, neither our house nor our neighbor's house was hit by the trees. They were tall enough to reach our house (on the left in the photo below). But, it barely missed, as you can see.

We have plenty of other stuff to do before leave for sabbatical. I really didn't want to add this to the mix. But, right now I feel very lucky that I have only tree and fence removal on my plate.

Lots of power outages today, and our church was cancelled. But, thankfully our power is still on.

--Matt

We received our temporary residence permits and Mark's study permit from the South African consulate today. In 1992, Tracy had much more difficulty with obtaining visas. In fact, we had to make a trip to Chicago to put some momentum into the process. 

This year, after a bit of pain completing the appropriate forms, we submitted them a while ago. And, today we got our passports back with visas and permits in them.

--Matt