Half-Way Through!

 Early this evening we passed the half-way mark of our isolation.  Dave called earlier and asked if we were getting stir-happy.  I said that we are so grateful to be here that we haven't noticed being confined.  That is the truth, but I'm thinking another week sounds like kind of a long time yet to stay in this flat without a breather outside.  I can't even think about people who are really truly confined, or who have been - like Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail.  How did they keep their sanity?

On the other hand, the weather outside is lovely, the view is lovely and we keep the windows open (no screens and very few bugs!).  If I feel the walls closing in, I'll go stand at the open window, breathe deeply and think about where we want to walk when we get out of here.

We are still trying to find a key for the refuse room off the parking lot, where there are large bins for recyclables, mulch and regular garbage.  The key is on the key ring to this apartment in the mission office.  So I have put in calls to the office as well as the flat management.  Hopefully one of them will get a key to us soon, and then SK will have to sneak down in the dead of night to deposit our growing mound of garbage/recyclables.

I am serious.  We were told that authorities check on every incoming person to see if they are obeying the isolation orders.  A heavy fine of more than a thousand pounds could be declared if transgressing.  We really don't want that to happen.  I think we'll call the young missionaries and ask them to come and take the garbage down to its rightful spot.  

I will make note here that we haven't generated too much garbage so far, thankfully.  But the mulching thing.....oh if we only had a garbage disposal!  There is a little bin lined in plastic on the countertop where you are to keep any organic refuse - egg shells, vegetable and fruit peels and pits, scrapings from plates etc.  

Our visa extension application is done....as much as we can do until someone instructs us what to do further, and as I have said before, we are safely here until a decision is reached, whenever that is.

All that was done without the internet - so to speak.  It will be connected tomorrow.  But all this time, we have had a connection to our old account - which was terminated by SK when we left England in March.  We haven't been billed, and we got a notice that it was turned off.  Someone obviously overlooked turning it off.

What a blessing!

We visited with Dave for a little while and wait for some instructions.  Boris Johnson has said that meetings cannot be more than six people.  So that means with SK and me, we will not be having more than four YSAs or four young missionaries here at a time, and that probably means we will be having people over more often and in smaller groups.  That works.

He will bring a car to us on Saturday.  Won't that be nice?  I can hardly wait to walk, but it will also be nice to have a car.  Between you and me, I hope SK is ready to start driving on the left side of the road again.  Our tensest and most contentious moments have been when we have been in the car trying to get somewhere.  On the other hand, we have laughed more about that experience than any other.

Well, tomorrow is a bright new day, and beginning the second week of confinement.