The nice thing about being a UU is that you get to celebrate all kinds of things. I went to the Seder dinner at church last night, for instance. It was a pleasant evening, though I did end up sitting next to one of those people who talks way too much ... I now know an awful lot about his opinions on a variety of subjects, but he doesn't know any of mine.

I realised a couple of days ago that we've now been in the US for three whole years. I think we arrived on the 5th or 6th of April, in 2001.

That whole period was a nightmare. The company here had told us that our visas would be ready at the beginning of December 2001. So, we sold our house in Durban, flew down to Cape Town to spend Christmas with my parents, and booked flights for the US on December 31 2001. Only, the kids' and my visas didn't arrive. In retrospect, it wasn't the company's fault that they didn't arrive on time. What was their fault, though, was that they didn't ever admit that they had absolutely no control over the process. Instead of being honest, they kept assuring us that the visas would arrive any day, that they were in constant contact with the INS - hah. So December 31 arrived, and the kids and I still had no visas. Bobby left for the US as planned, and the kids and I remained in Cape Town to wait. Fortunately, my parents had a self-contained granny flat attached to their house, which wasn't being used, so we could stay there without being too much of an imposition. That was a weird time - it was odd, being in limbo. The school year in South Africa starts in January, but we couldn't enroll the kids in school, since we were expecting the visa to arrive within a few days. So, I homeschooled them. It was fun - Cape Town is chock-full of wonderful things to do - but I missed Bobby terribly, and the uncertainty was incredibly stressful. Bear in mind that work kept telling us "just a few more days, and it'll be here". By the end of January, Bobby had reached the end of his tether. He was sick of hotel living, missing us horribly and enraged by the people at work - so he flew back to Cape Town on the 31st, the idea being that he'd work for the CT branch till the visa eventually came through. Being together instantly made the whole thing fun instead of torturous.

So, February, Bobby worked at the Cape Town branch, I carried on homeschooling the kids, and we went on a ton of wonderful sightseeing trips during the weekends and evenings. We were very conscious of being an imposition on my folks, so we tried to be fairly unobtrusive - tricky, with three kids. Not that they ever so much as breathed a hint of reproach at us - but still. Our presence had to have cramped their style at times, even though they never let on.

At the beginning of March, Bobby came up with what I initially dismissed as a crazy plan : we should take this opportunity to have a really great holiday overseas. But then I thought - why not? If an opportunity presents itself, one should take it, right? So, my parents watched in complete disbelief as I organised our trip to Europe in less than two days. Visas and all. (The kids told me afterwards that my mom had said to my dad "She'll never do it in time. It's just not possible!") We spent the next month youth hostelling in the UK, Paris, and Amsterdam. It was a fantastic experience, and wonderful learning for the kids, who were 3, 8 and 11 at that time.

We got back to Cape Town at the beginning of April. Sadly, my grandfather had died the night before we arrived. Bobby had to leave for the US almost immediately, as he had a conference to attend, but the kids and I were able to stay on for the funeral. I'm very glad we were able to stay. But I don't ever want to relive that day. It was awful ... the kids and I went to the funeral in the morning, and then my dad took us straight from the tea afterwards to the airport. I was a wreck, all teary and miserable from the funeral - and then we found out that our travel agent (who was a work connection of Bobby's) had screwed up, and there were only three seats available on that flight, rather than four. Fortunately, my uncle - who owns his own travel agency - was down from Zimbabwe for the funeral, so he managed to pull some strings for us, and we all got onto the flight, and we all had seats.

The flights were grim. We flew from Cape Town to Jo'burg, then to Amsterdam , then to Detroit, then to Orlando. The whole thing took 33 hours. Somewhere between Jo'burg and Amsterdam, Stephen got incredibly sick. I think he must have thrown up for eight hours straight. By the time we arrived at Schipol, he could barely walk. I was very grateful to the KLM people, because they called their first-aid team, gave him an anti-emetic injection and got him rehydrated. So by the time we eventually landed in Orlando, I wasn't in all that good a way - jetlagged, still suffering from the funeral, and hadn't slept in a few days. I was distinctly underwhelmed by my first sight of Orlando - it was all dust and billboards and highways. And when we got to our apartment and I tried to run a bath, I couldn't figure out how the plug worked. Which was about the last straw for me. Poor Bobby couldn't work out why I was crying over the bath.

Now, three years later, I can run a bath without tears, and I've discovered many really beautiful places in and around this city. We've made a lot of friends, and we've achieved the goals we set out with, which were to save a decent amount of money, and to see as much of the country as we could. Three years ago, I would never have predicted that we'd still be here - but here we are, and we're all happy. I wonder where we'll be in 2007.