Caliban – Opinion and Righteous Anger

Good things in the last week (in no particular order):

• Eloïse likes to hold our hand and lift her feet off the ground when crossing the road. She has a great sense of fun and is always making us smile with her antics.

• The new series of Keyzer & De Boer Advocaten has started. The quality of the first episode was high, and It’s even more fun to watch now, given that we live in the neighbourhood in which it’s filmed.

• We finally got around to assembling our Lundia shelving for the cellar, so it’s looking a lot tidier down there now. I assembled the shelves, but Sarah did all of the tidying.

• We’ve finally ordered a sideboard for the sitting room. It won’t arrive until next year now, but it will definitely improve the feeling of the room when it does come.

• We’ve booked our Christmas flights, including a five day stay in Iceland on the way back. Believe it or not, it was cheaper to stop off in Iceland for a few days on the way back than to fly to America and back in any other way. Direct flights to Boston were absurdly priced, but even the airlines with indirect flights couldn’t compete with the Icelandair fare. Well, it suits me. We love Iceland, so we’re happy to make what is essentially a free stop in the land of ice and fire. We’re already looking forward to lounging around in Bláa Lónið (The Blue Lagoon) and hoping that the northern lights will be swirling overhead.

• We picked up Sarah’s 5 year residence permit today. She will now have no more immigration hassles until 2011, by which time she can apply for a permanent residence card or even go for naturalisation.

McKenna-Macdonald Acres has seen a lot of comings and goings recently. After Geoff’s return from Rome for a few days, we then played host to Frank, who rolled in on the train from Germany, where he had been attending a mutual friend’s wedding. It was fun to hang out with him for a few days, as we hadn’t seen him in more than a year. Surprisingly, we ended up spending most of our time trawling the antique shops in the Spiegelkwartier.

The gap left by Frank has now been filled by Jules and Linda (and, not to forget, Bloem), who are staying with us this weekend. Once they return to Nijmegen, we’ll have no more visitors until next month. As much fun as our visitors are, it will be nice to have our space to ourselves for a while again.

This evening, we all enjoyed our first Sint Maarten in the Vondelpark. [Sint Maarten](http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sint-Maarten_(feest)) is a little like Halloween, in that children go from door to door, singing songs in the hope of receiving confectionery and fruit. They carry a lantern to light their way.

In the Vondelpark, it’s an annual tradition for hundreds of children to march through the park with their parents, accompanied by a brass band. It’s a nice sight, with all of the illuminated lanterns strung out along the length of the park.

Sarah received a letter from the Dienst Persoonsgegevens (basically, the local council) yesterday, informing her that she can come in and pick up the extension to her residence permit in a couple of weeks. It referred to a prior letter from the IND (the Dutch immigration service), in which Sarah was supposedly informed of the IND’s decision to extend her resident permit. Oddly, we never received that letter. Perhaps it will yet come and someone somewhere is simply behind on his paperwork.

Nevertheless, the important thing is that the IND has apparently decided to grant Sarah a five year residence permit, so she doesn’t have to deal with them again until August 2011. By that time, she’ll be able to obtain a permanent residence permit or even citizenship, if she so desires. This is fabulous news, not least for me, as I’m the one who has been filling in the forms, collating the supporting data, writing explanatory letters, etc. That’s one less thing to worry about.