End of May

I haven't posted that much lately, and I probably won't be posting that much this summer.

Life here is slowly but surely coming to an end. It is of course sad in a way, but more than anything I'm excited to go back home finally.

I passed my citizenship exam last week. It was easy since I knew all the answers to the 100 questions and they only asked me six. They asked who the governor of Florida is, what Martin Luther King Jr was known for etc. I was nervous more than anything. The lady interviewing me was very official and after every question she asked me she stared at me looking very serious and intimidating. Before the whole thing started I had to lift up my hand and swear I would only tell the truth, so yeah, it was super official. They went through my whole application which was several pages long. It had all my previous residency and employment history, tax papers for the last three years and things like that. All in all it actually took less than 15 minutes though, which I was surprised because my letter said it would take two hours. I mentioned that to the interview lady on my way out and she said that it sometimes takes two hours when the applicant has criminal records they need to look into. :O

I was told I will receive a letter about the time of my oath ceremony next month. The letter arrived on Thursday and said my ceremony is on the 29th... that's Tuesday in like a few days! The good thing is that I'm already off on Tuesdays since it would be an awfully short notice to try to get the day off. So after Tuesday, looks I will officially be Finnish-American.

Last week I started looking for flights to Finland in the fall, just to get an idea on what price range we should be looking at. I found a supergood deal, one way tickets to Finland with only one layover for $550 per person. That is like half of what I was expecting to pay. I discussed it with Chris and we decided to get them. We'll be flying on September 18th. The cats Neko and Sammy will be flying too and their flights are almost as expensive than ours.. well not exactly, $175 per cat, but with all the official paperwork and vet bills and buying them airline approved carriers, I am sure their travel will cost at least as much as ours!

So there is a lot of planning and stressing going on about the move. We extended our house lease till the end of August, and from the beginning on September we'll be staying with family until it's time to leave. The packing will start soon, and the hard part is of course deciding what to leave behind. We've already done a few rounds to Goodwill this year. It's a store where they take your old stuff and sell it. I know we could try to sell some stuff ourselves, but most of it is not really worth anything, and we need to get rid of it sooner rather than later. I think the only thing we'll end up selling is our car, and I don't even want to think about how to do that just yet.

All that to say, my project for the summer is packing and getting rid off stuff, and I don't know if I'll be blogging that much about it. We'll see. There is a lot to do and I'm working hard and so is Chris. Allthough I am actually taking a whole week off in two weeks! It's my first vacation since I started in my job over a year ago... a much needed break for sure! I hope to get a lot done in the house during that week.

The kittens are growing and they are very, very playfull. They'll be eight weeks on Monday, and I think the first one may be leaving us already on Tuesday.. we'll see if we have time though. The other two I'm not so sure about. I've had people tell me they want one and then when I try to talk to them more about it they never get back with me. :/ But I'm sure they will find homes, they are so cute and adorable.

Gonna get going now. Time for some more coffee!