Bound for Barcelona

I am now sitting in Singapore Chang Airport's new terminal 3, having enjoyed their amazing toilets, writing this entry and finally being able to relax. It has been a roller coaster ride of emotions for the past week leading up to today but we are finally on our way to Barcelona!

A fantastic weekend away in Canberra was marred by the recurrence of my left lacrimal gland infection. It just didn't respond to oral antibiotics and required intravenous antibiotics to give it a kick up its butt. That of course meant hospitalisation, crazily organising childcare and missing out on 3 days of work! In seriousness, the inability to work on my long "to-do" list before our holiday was frustrating. I returned home earlier than planned only to discover that a volcano has erupted in Iceland sending ash plumes over the UK. Then spent the next few days watching in horror as the airport closures spread throughout Europe including Barcelona. Our flight was cancelled. And in desperation we bought the only tickets we could find into Europe, flying with Aerolineas Argentinas into Madrid via Auckland and Buenos Aires. What followed was a complete drama in itself.

On the 19th of April, we were told 4 times by Singapore airlines that our flight was cancelled. It was only upon checking their website at 8pm that we found out the flight had been reinstated. After a mad flurry of phonecalls, it was confirmed that the flight was going ahead but we had no seats on the plane. 4 hours later, still no resolution but a further interesting development unveiled itself. Jonah still had his seat!!!

Determined, we set out to be at the ticket office in the airport by 8am to argue our case. We had until 945am before we had to check in for our horrendous alternative route. Persistence paid off, at exactly 930am, we had acquired ourselves seats on SQ378 on Singapore Airlines to Barcelona. Woohoo!!! In the end, it worked out for the best as the flight will now go direct to Barcelona as Milan is still closed saving us one extra stop.

Waiting to check into our flight to Singapore

Our plan B plane!

The children did very well today considering the early start. Elliot and Lara were almost unnoticeable with the on-demand entertainment system doing its job. Jonah was a surprise package. Although very active when he was awake, he voluntarily chose to sit in his chair when it was close to his bedtime and put himself to sleep.

Elliot enjoying games and Lara enthralled with the Fantastic Mr Fox

Jonah sleeping in his seat

We have to go now, to try and sort out a better seating arrangement. We are all separated. I don't anyone would appreciate having to sit with Jonah for 13 hours...

Sight on the target

Malcolm and I went to a beginner's photography course today and we had a blast! He borrowed dad's G10 and the instructor loaned me a Nikon D3000 (not that it means that much to me at the time). He figured it was the lightest and would be easiest for me to use (the tiny person that I am). It was useful to be able to compare the 2 side by side and have someone explain and demonstrate the functions. Who would have thought that we would have so much fun sitting in front of a fountain taking photos?!?!

After much discussion and research based on level III evidence, we are considering purchasing a Nikon 18-200mm lens to minimize the gazillion number of paraphernalia that we already carry we us when we go on holidays. In the meantime, we'll borrow Michael's Nikon D60 body until we decide how funky a body we really need. This is to go with the G10 that we'll pilfer from my parents for our point and shoot. How's that for a plan?

Next on the agenda is of course not to finalise plans for our trip to Europe but to book tickets for our NEXT holiday to the States. We had to grab the deal offered by Delta with prices dropping by about $600 from a few weeks ago. We got flight centre to price match as well as to use $200 in vouchers to minimize the damage. The seats have been reserved, the children's meal ordered and travel insurance purchased. All in all, I think we did pretty well!

DISASTER!

A picture is worth a thousand words and the following picture says it all. If you're wondering what that thing is, it's suppose to be our fish extender.

Oh and by the way, our team only scored 1 (out of 10) for the geography round at trivia on Thursday night. I maintain that it is because they didn't ask any European geography questions.

Time to get serious

Ok, time is marching on. Ethel has done the pre-sewing of the FE and my iron-on transfer paper for dark material has arrived. Apparently, this gives more vibrant images than those for light material. I'll take the word of the FE experts.

Got myself and Jonah ready to do some serious shopping. First off to the supermarket to get some food. Forgot to put my online order in last night for home delivery. Doh. Then off to get something cute that's not pink for Hester's little baby girl who arrived a whole 8 weeks early. Next on the agenda are printer cartridges in readiness for some serious printing. Followed closely by purchases of various items needed to complete my projects. I need to be vague here for fear that friends may be reading! Got home in time for the pianos to be tuned, to organise a replacement buddy for my photography class, arrange for the children to have sleepovers and chat with Ali to organise a very late and last minute baby shower. Even found the journals so as to be able to post photos, as well as sent out more Disney junk mail. Not a bad morning's work!

Might catch a quick snooze while Jonah is asleep. Need to be fresh to study some European geography in preparation for our weekly Trivia quiz tonight.

The countdown begins...

I can't believe that we'll be flying to Barcelona in less than 3 weeks and despite booking our cruise 8 months ago I feel like I haven't had enough time to prepare. So to recap, we're heading to the Mediterranean for 11 days with Disney Cruise Lines on the Magic. Here's a summary of the itinerary.

Day	Port	Ashore	Onboard
Saturday	Barcelona, Spain	—	4:00 p.m.
Sunday	At Sea	—	—
Monday	Valletta, Malta	8:30 a.m.	6:00 p.m.
Tuesday	Tunis, Tunisia	8:30 a.m.	4:00 p.m.
Wednesday	Naples, Italy (Pompeii)	8:30 a.m.	9:00 p.m.
Thursday	Civitavecchia, Italy (Rome)	7:45 a.m.	9:00 p.m.
Friday	La Spezia, Italy (Florence, Pisa)	7:30 a.m.	7:30 p.m.
Saturday	At Sea	—	—
Sunday	Ajaccio, Corsica	7:30 a.m.	5:00 p.m.
Monday	Villefranche, France (Monte Carlo, Cannes, Nice)	8:00 a.m.	7:00 p.m.
Tuesday	At Sea	—	—
Wednesday	Barcelona, Spain	7:00 a.m.	—

We'll be heading to Barcelona three days before the cruise to meet up with my parents and explore the beautiful city. Most of our planning for each port is done but there seem to be a thousand and one things that I still haven't done. One of the few things that I have done is made travel journals for the children. A fellow cruiser on the DISboards kindly created and shared beautiful Disney themed journal pages for our cruise. After getting over my initial disbelief that the 5.5" by 8.5" binder for which the pages were designed for were not a standard size in Australia and there not available, I managed to (with the help of colleagues at work) bind them myself with a spiral binder. I found some nice textured black cardboard for the back and a plastic sheet for the front. I thought it looked mighty spiffy and thankfully so do the children. Now I only have to find where the little monkeys put them so I can take a photo and post a picture! (Addendum: I found them!)

In the meantime, tomorrow will be the children's last day of school. Dear Lord, please help me cope with the school holidays. My photography short course is on this Saturday which I'm really excited after browsing through so many beautiful travel shots online. After that, we'll have to organise ourselves to go to Canberra to visit dear friends. Upon our return, we'll have exactly 9 nine days to get ourselves sorted for Europe. No problems!

General updates

Just in case anyone is interested in the mundane details of my life...

• We're all over our viral gastro...finally!
• I made it to see the oral surgeon and booked in to get my 2 wisdom teeth removed under general anaesthetic because I am too chicken to get it done under local anaesthetic
• I sprained my ankle and was embarrassingly fed "lunch" by my GP, on top of receiving free crutches and a discount for an MRI if I should need one. Thanks Dr Marrett!
• Elliot has joined the school band and so has started playing the trumpet. I am still trying to understand how one note can sound so different all the time.
• Jonah can now say "hat"!
• I have since found out that I am unable to renew my REP electronically after all. Luckily, I got in touch with the deputy at ICA and it looks like my parents can now do it on behalf. This may not be such a bad things as they are the ones who are keen for me to keep it anyway.
• I discovered that I really enjoy listening to Disney and language podcasts. But perhaps subscribing to 4 different Disney ones may be a bit of an overkill.
• We met up again with our fellow Disney Mediterranean cruisers, this time as a family at South Restaurant, and discovered American cuisine close to home. Now we know where to go for great pumpkin pie!

Au pair affairs II

Sadly, today we had to inform Marie that we would be ending our agreement early and that we would no longer require her help after we return from Europe. Unfortunately, things have not improved significantly and have in fact gotten worse. It was not an easy conversation to have and so I was relieved that Malcolm did it.

Fortunately, Alex is able to cover for 2 weeks until the arrival of our next au pair, an American girl studying biostatistics in Boston! Will update when the time comes...