these will be the days

"Your visa has been granted. .... We hope you enjoy your stay in Australia. Welcome!"

These have been the long awaited words! Yesterday I finally sat down and clicked through the almost endless Australian website for my holiday maker visa online application. As already mentioned earlier, this seems like the black hole2.0 and seriously IT IS. Even after I finally found out that apparently all I would need for my application is my passport, I went online and searched for the application form. They don´t make it easy for you, these mates down under! Seriously! So, after entering all important details of my life, health, character and so on, I paid the AUS$ 195 and exited. Fingers crossed that I will be under the 110.000 applicants who are granted a visa, I waited for an answer from down under! Three days max. they say on one of their microsites!

Nothing yet! Knowing me and my luck, I already imagined myself waiting on it for those three days! But after checking my mail... the second time today, I have to admit.... there it was... in the junk folder! But at least my account let it through! :-)

After dancing around my flat and screaming at my friends via skype ... I realised that this was REALLY it, I am one step closer to temporalily moving and working in Australia. This is what I have wanted for years now. I AM THRILLED! And as if they´d had known it, our HR Dept. already sent me the first draft of my sabbatical contract today. :-)

Now they just have to decided on the exact month I will be able to start my sabbatical and then I am ready to book my flights. Where will I start? Melbourne or Sydney? Somewhere totally new or somewhere I already know my way around? mmmhhhhh... let´s wait and see!