After staring at websites until our eyes bled, and sending about 100 emails to the lovely people at International Autos we bought a car. Well, we said that we will buy a car, and paid a deposit.
There was only a limited number of cars we were allowed to buy (they have to be American made, and then you can get a discount, but only if you buy one before you arrive in America) which made it something of a challenge. We spent a while looking at Dodge Caravans, but then decided it would be a bit risky to buy a car we'd never even (knowingly) seen one of in the flesh.
So, in a rather dull fashion, we bought a Ford Focus. But to make it more interesting, it's yellow. Screaming yellow, to give it the precise colour.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
LindenStrasse
I've been investigating how to get German TV channels in the US. It's a challenge to investigate, because things seem to have been in turmoil and flux, with companies going bankrupt, and other companies changing their channel lineups. I found Adventures with German TV in the US which gave enough information (just about), although a lot of the links are in German.
Nurseries / Preschools
I began to think about nursery (or preschool, as we are supposed to call it).
I asked someone at Corporation of Future Employment if they knew anything, and they pulled some stuff from the CFE Parent's club website - which was a 35 page PDF, full of various bits of advice.
I rang a couple of preschools, to ask them about how we might get D & A enrolled, but most of them didn't answer. (They have really cute answer machine messages that say "We're with the children right now"). The one that did answer said that we have to go on a tour first, and the next tour is the 26th of September. When we have been on a tour, we are allowed to pay $200, to join the waiting list. Which is of indeterminate length.
There was a lot of stuff about nannies, and how much they cost, and I trawled google and craigslist as well. The crucial question that comes first is - "Do you want an illegal one?" I'm not sure if this is illegal as in illegal immigrant, or illegal as in pay cash in hand, no tax, etc, or possibly both. But anyway, an illegal will cost about $10/hour upwards, and a legal about $15/hour upwards. With both of these, you get what you pay for.
The best, quick thing might be to try to find a person who wants to share a nanny in some way. But it's easiest to do that by thinking about when we get there.
I asked someone at Corporation of Future Employment if they knew anything, and they pulled some stuff from the CFE Parent's club website - which was a 35 page PDF, full of various bits of advice.
I rang a couple of preschools, to ask them about how we might get D & A enrolled, but most of them didn't answer. (They have really cute answer machine messages that say "We're with the children right now"). The one that did answer said that we have to go on a tour first, and the next tour is the 26th of September. When we have been on a tour, we are allowed to pay $200, to join the waiting list. Which is of indeterminate length.
There was a lot of stuff about nannies, and how much they cost, and I trawled google and craigslist as well. The crucial question that comes first is - "Do you want an illegal one?" I'm not sure if this is illegal as in illegal immigrant, or illegal as in pay cash in hand, no tax, etc, or possibly both. But anyway, an illegal will cost about $10/hour upwards, and a legal about $15/hour upwards. With both of these, you get what you pay for.
The best, quick thing might be to try to find a person who wants to share a nanny in some way. But it's easiest to do that by thinking about when we get there.
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