Mixed Emotions

Today was the last day of school for the kids and as we got up, it was with excitement and sadness and an extra dose of cold.  Winter has definitely arrived....

We dropped the kids at school and I went for breakfast with a good friend of mine.  Julie and I had a nice talk and as we were visiting, she said to me that the winter break might in fact only be started the following week.  My heart sank because I had thought the kids were finished today, all of them. I thought that there would be two weeks between my kids leaving and the resuming of classes for their classmates.  Finish school right at the break on the 24th and leave 5 days later.  That's part of how we picked the date to fly out, a logical break in the school year, an easier time to exit.  But no, there's another week left....

As I dropped of Julie and picked up Carl to head to school, he told me more unsettling news.  We have been waiting for a number of weeks for Elena's passport to come and over the last 24 hours, we have had email contact with the consulate in Peru.  Apparently instead of a temporary passport, they are processing a regular passport.  Instead of it being issued in Peru and then sent in a few days, the passport was issued from Canada and now is on it's way to Peru.  There's no way that it will get here by the 29th.  And so we frantically filled out paperwork for the temporary passport, adding in another trip to the bank, adding in another $70 payment.....only to find out today from FedEx tracking that the estimated arrival here is July 4th.  The regular passport is getting to Peru today and will be sent straight back to Canada and we can't do anything to change it now.

Are we having to delay?  Do some of us have to stay and others go?  What do we do in the meantime?  Go to school this week?!  How long will it take for the passport to come?  We don't even have an option of applying for a US and Canada visa for her to enter into the countries on her Bolivian passport because we've run out of time.  Seriously, this is ulcer causing.

I have these mixed emotions.  I've already said goodbye at school, taken home all their work, and cried with the teachers, but there's still school on Monday.  We've already said so many goodbyes and now we don't know what to say when people ask when we are leaving.  We just say, the 29th, but to closer friends it's Ojala (God willing) on the 29th and explain what the situation is. 

I told Carl this morning I can't handle these prolonged goodbyes.  How do I prepare myself and the kids for Wednesday when on Tuesday we still aren't sure when we are leaving?  We have to say goodbye and with the ones we have already done, we can't go back and do it all over again for the sake of having a bit more time with people.  That's too draining.

Oh gosh, pray that it comes....