Thursday, February 02, 2006

Alongside the house saga....

... Life goes on. It's been chilly, grey and windy (though no rain) for a couple of days now. Rather miserable. I did a couple of loads of laundry this morning and hung them out, but will leave them overnight; that usually works best. I suppose a tumble drier would be a good idea for the rainier times of year (as suggested in a comment a while ago) but they're expensive to run, they use a lot of energy, and they're not particularly good for clothes. About half our clothes can't be tumble-dried anyway (they would either shrink or grow!) and of course if things get left in a drier for more than about ten minutes after it's finished, they crease and then need ironing.

So I much prefer hanging out in the fresh air where possible ... inside out, so they can just be folded and put straight away when they're dry. I iron about twice a year, and that's usually when Tim's playing in a concert needing a white cotton shirt, and it wasn't hung up properly so looks crumpled.

About ten o'clock this morning we went to the bank, to try to open a savings account. Since significant amounts of money will be transferred here while we're in process of buying a house, we thought we might as well get a bit of interest (current accounts don't give any here). There were lots of options but we chose one with instant access. Should have been easy, but there were computer problems at the bank, and it seemed to take ages before the printer produced the forms to sign (about six times each) to set up the account.

This afternoon Richard went with a friend who's in the building trade, and an architect, to look at the house we're still hoping to buy...details in the post below.

Shortly after they left a friend from Limassol arrived to collect some things his family left here when we last saw them, and we chatted a while. He mentioned that someone he knows, who's in Larnaka tonight, flying out tomorrow, will be visiting the Doulos at the weekend - and is going to make a point of saying hello to Daniel!

Tim took a look at our friend's laptop - he was asking some technical questions which I didn't understand - and then, after checking Dan's downloads and starting some more (thank goodness for Broadband!) he rushed off to his singing lesson. After that he had half an hour to eat before rushing out again to the 'Christianity Explored' course that his church is running. When he got back - with some doughnuts from the bakery - he started copying Dan's stuff onto CD.

While he was out, some more friends popped over for an hour to chat. Then Richard phoned the guy at the hotel who's going to see Daniel, and discovered that he has lots of luggage space! Wonderful... that means we can send the software CDs directly rather than having to put them in a package to Germany to be forwarded via air freight. We can also send out some more thin trousers and shorts, which he wanted (I've sent some but they probably won't arrive for several more weeks), and all the chocolate he had at Christmas but didn't have room for... and Richard's sending him a text message to ask if there's anything else he'd like while we have this opportunity. Apparently he'll actually join the Doulos on Sunday; we're not quite sure how the group will get there, but assume there won't be any more flights, so no more limits of luggage weight.

No comments: