Bureaucracy and other nonsense

So I sent my rent for the month of September at the beginning of August. It needed to be there by the 25th, so I thought the earlier the better, and not wanting to have to worry about the time it would take to transfer the money from a US to a German account I took care of it on the 1st of the month. I contacted the student housing folks the other day, to see if they had received it and the woman said that she didn't see it. However the money is no longer in my account and the folks at xoom.com say that it was sent.

Now, the woman with whom I had been corresponding, is on vacation - of course because it's August in Germany, so I was talking to a new woman, but theoretically she should be able to find it. I'll have to wait until the woman who I was communicating with before gets back to see if she can track it down. It will be an odd amount because of the exchange rate, and my name should be associated with the transfer, but we'll see what happens. blah....

In other news, I'm going to set up my packing station in the basement. After scouring the Web for resources on how to pack for a year abroad, I found an awesome site run by three feminist Ph.D. students about fashion, which has got me thinking about both how I dress and what to pack. One of the women on the site is also traveling to Germany for a year this fall and posted her strategies for packing. I'm taking my cue from that - though my husband will be visiting a couple of times over the course of the year so I may have him bring me some stuff to supplement my wardrobe.

I'll keep you updated as things go along.