Refugee status was granted...

Maybe not not the same refugee status that the Tamils will get when they land in BC, but we were declared refugees none the less. Lemme splain.

Friday we moved into the house; 4 weeks from Friday we will get our furniture. Really not the best start and all thanks to a longshoreman's strike in Montreal.  All week I've been hearing about "the official handover" for the house and all week I've been totally primed for it cause I'm thinking there will be cake and balloons and everything. Nope.  The official handover means you get a set of keys and a bunch of instruction books for the appliances, which are all written in Czech. Not even a sniff of cake.

So now we have keys, no cake, and we are ready to sit and relax. Except, we don't have anywhere to sit. So Jamie and I decide (well really I decide) to walk to Kika which is a German version of Ikea. The operative word is walk. It's only 15 minutes but when you are trying to carry large unassembled furniture in a knapsack it becomes a problem. There is zero English in the shops here in Pruhonice and so when I get to the cash, I speak my very best English loudly to make them understand. I then add a dance. And the lady behind the counter speaks just as loudly back at me in Czech.  She doesn't dance which is probably where the communication problem is, but I don't say anything.  In the meantime, the people behind me in the lineup are either fascinated or frightened and it would be hard to tell except that  en masse they leave to go over to the other checkout so my money is on frightened.

So I turn my attention back to the lady behind my cash.  I speak loudly and slowly and dance the word for 'delivery' one more time.  She smiles back sweetly, slams down the 'we are now closed' sign at the end of the cash desk, takes my visa card and dismisses me.  Thank you for your patronage. 

In the meantime, Jamie is sitting in some big comfy chair he found by the exit, watching youtube on his ipod and totally oblivious to this whole thing and I've got about 100lbs of linen cupboards and area rugs to get home.  More to come.