Rain has come and gone.

The big news Sunday and Monday was the rain. We got about 6 inches in two days. This may not sound like much compared to some other countries, but that is the equivalent to 4 months worth here. Our driveway started washing away, but thankfully there was enough to still drive by. Monday was shopping day and paperwork. Tuesday was getting my lesson ready. Tuesday night Basketball practice went well. I acutally had a couple of mini-conversations with some of the guys. Wednesday, I took the kids to their swimming class, and finished working on my sermon. Thursday, I took our car to the dealership for its 40,000 km check-up. It had a few filters replaced and the oil changed. I left directly from there to go to Montpellier for my appointment with the French Office of Imigration and Integration (OFII). It took about 2 hours to get their and then 45 minutes to find the place. The streets were horrible. There was construction going on as they are expanding the Tram. Some streets were closed and some streets that were once one direction, were now the other direction. My GPS actually started to yell at one point. I finally parked and took off walking. It still was a 45 mintue walk. After asking 4 people for directions it ended up being right across from the train station. The appointment went well, I had x-rays taken, met with the doctor and then with the "Visa lady". I also found out about Angie's visa. Normally they schedule husband and wife together so I was thinking there was a problem. You cannot get in touch with them by phone or email so I had to wait til my appointment. Come to find out that Angie's paper was stuck to the back of mine and they did not notice it. Wow. They said they would hurry and try to get her an appointment in a couple of weeks. I met a couple of people there, an american couple with a young baby, and a newly married couple from Chili. I actually gave the Chiliean couple a ride home because they missed their train because of the strike. That is another subjet all together. President Sarkozy is trying to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62. This has made many people upset. College and high school kids are striking because there will be less jobs if people work two extra years. Others are striking because their work conditions are hard and they don't want to endure it for two more years. Transportation has been slow as there are a lot less trains running. All but one Total refinery has been closed (hoping that there are not any gas shortages). Anyways it is nice to have the visa paperwork done (at least for me). I made it back home 30 minutes before the Bible study. We took a break from the sermon on the mount to look at the healing of the man born blind. There were three present not including us. Today I need to get gas (done), look at a friends computer (done), work on getting a bill paid (done), blog (doing), make a trip to the dump, move some furniture, and not forget to get the kids. Basketball practice is tonight and tomorrow there is a conference at a church in Toulouse on Homiletics that I will be attending. Enjoy some rainy day pictures and God bless, JASON