Visa!

Today my new visa was granted - it allows me to live and work in Australia for four years, and has involved being sponsored by the school that's employing me. It's been a long process, but I've finally got it. In practice, if I choose to stay in Australia, I should be in a position to apply for permanent residency before the visa expires. On the down side it means the end of childcare work as I cannot work for anyone other than the school under this visa. I had hoped it might not be granted for another few weeks, but I cannot complain and I didn't want to leave it until January to apply as it would have been getting too close to the end of my student visa, and I wasn't prepared to risk there being a problem during the school holidays. Still, it is a huge weight off my mind. I also now have provisional teaching accreditation (that came through a couple of weeks ago).

It's a good day for it to come through - Kit and I are hosting an Advent dinner party this evening - we're having some friends over and doing a West African curry - so I will celebrate this evening. Kit leaves for Europe for two months at the weekend, so it's kind of in lieu of us having a Christmas party.


Thus far decorations are, well, 'minimalistic'. My budget doesn't stretch very far, but I have managed to get a small (by which I mean 'small') Christmas tree from Woolies, for a few dollars. I would say the photo doesn't do it justice, but that would be to go too far. It does, though, have different coloured flashing lights. The weather is actually quite cool and wet today (18 degrees) and I even put on a jumper earlier, which is about as close as the weather is going to get this month to being Christmasy.