Mark attended Rhenish Primary School for the first time today.
I walked with him down the hill to the school (about 20 minutes). He had butterflies, but his teacher, Mrs. Birt, assigned Julian to be his friend for the day. Mrs. Burt said Mark was quiet today in class but that he made friends easily.
At Rhenish, students go barefoot most of the day. Kids must wear their shoes to and from school. But, in between, they can take their shoes off as they please. Mark thinks this is pretty cool.
Catherine continues to have some difficulty adjusting to her new daycare situation. The creche has significantly more structure than her daycare back in the U.S. We're hoping she gets used to it soon. Today was an improvement, we were told.
I received and accepted a formal offer of employment from CPUT today. (Quite a long time in coming.) But, the HR person responsible for assigning me a staff number is out today. So, I can only get my staff number tomorrow (Thur). After that, I'll get access to the computer network, get a CPUT email address, and gain access to the eLearning web portal at CPUT. I don't expect that I'll be fully ready by my first class Monday at 14h00. I'm re-learning how to work in African time :-).
Then, with this offer letter in hand, I went to Standard Bank in Stellenbosch to try, once again, to convert our non-resident bank account to a resident bank account. I have all the proper documentation now. (Photocopies caused the problem before.) Unfortunately, the decisions about resident vs. non-resident accounts are made in Cape Town. So, all our paperwork will be brought by courier to Cape Town. A decision is expected on Friday. Ironically, the person at the Stellenbosch branch is expected to be able to judge the authenticity of my documents and detect forgeries, thereby protecting against money laundering, I suppose. But, he can't make the decision about whether our account can be a resident account. When the decision is made (in Cape Town) to switch our account to "resident" status, they'll be looking at the photocopies. We need this account to be converted soon so that we can make interbank transfers for Mark's school and our 2nd car. Arrrrgh!
I suppose these are nothing more than startup difficulties that occur when moving anywhere. But, I'm impatient to get past this phase. Mark's starting school today was a big help in that regard. If we get the bank sorted out, we'll be in better shape.
--Matt