Third year at ACS, 3 days of school behind us, and 3 days with no tears. It’s a miraculous shift that couldn’t have come at a better time. 
At least when you go to school from a hotel, you can have anything you want for breakfast, including hot chocolate.
With all the other details of our lives in flux, it’s so nice to drop a smiling child off at school and know that she’s excited to be there and going to have a great day. That way we have the maximum amount of mental energy left to deal with other stressors: an internet company that doesn’t have a record of a payment we made back in June, a work phone that is locked to an American carrier even though Josh requires an unlocked phone for his job, a paycheck that isn’t correct — but wait, maybe it will be correct . . . I guess we’ll find out in two days if someone did their job, chasing down health insurance policy numbers (for the residence visa), sorting out who is going to pay our hotel bill, and more. Basically Josh has spent the majority of his time on administrative tasks related to our lives here, in-between work meetings/emails/and phone calls for his actual job.
All of the above are things that Josh has been taking care of, thankfully. I didn’t have to spend 6 hours on the phone with the internet people or field emails about the potential disaster of an incorrectly filed W4 (the outcome of which will be known on Friday). In general all is well, and it is coming together, but it has taken a lot of effort and mental energy. As Josh said, not one thing has gone smoothly.
Even getting our laundry done took a turn for the ridiculous. There are several services here that will pick up bags of clothes, wash, fold and return them for a decent price, approximately $13/bag. There are no public laundromats here so we’re happy there’s an alternative to the very expensive hotel cleaning services. The other day we were on our way to breakfast and then church, so we filled up 2 bags and asked the boys to drop them in the hotel lobby with the concierge so the service could pick them up while we were out at church.
When we returned, I checked with the hotel guys and yes, the clothes were indeed picked up. All was well until we got a phone call from the driver who was wondering where to pick up our clothes . . . ah yes, the very sweet, very helpful guys at the concierge’s desk misunderstood and thought the boys wanted the clothes to go to the hotel laundry. So Josh had to go downstairs and talk to the manager and explain that we would never, ever consider paying $600 for laundry (the bill they presented) when we could get it done for under $30. It all worked out and we weren’t on the hook for the full charge, but again, extra effort, extra stress, and something easy that ended up being difficult.
We think we will have Josh’s residence visa early next week and the magical Emirates ID (required for everything — car registration, lease signing, bank account opening, etc) by the end of next week. Assuming everything goes according to plan . . .