Kudos to the Australian immigration dudes.

Well, as I think I stated before, Jeff and I had to get our Visas. Despite all of the encouragement from my school to, "Do it early" we'd kind of put it off for a couple of reasons (namely money). So, it's December 14th and we finally decided to sit down and get them done (as we're getting worried that we may be cutting things a little too close). From everything we've heard the process is sometimes lengthy (months), and if we are refused, we can not enter the country.

So last night (14th) we sit at the computer and submit our applications online. (11pm)

I check my e-mail at work today (15th) and get both my own and Jeff's approved Visas. (11am)

That's a 12 hour turn around. Amazing.

Now we have everything we need to go. Tickets, Visas, Savings, Packs, Ohia Sitters, ahhhhh...
Life is feeling pretty good.

Tickets

Well, we finally bought our tickets. We are scheduled to leave 7am on February 1st from Detroit.
We will be flying in to Las Vegas, and then to L.A. and then in to Sydney. It's a pretty long flight, but it was the cheapest one we could find ($1600 each plus tax). We'll have the same route on the way home (July 17th), but it's neat because we'll be traveling back in time, leaving Sydney at 1pm and arriving in L.A. at like 9am.

In other news, our Visas are getting worked out this week. Hopefully everything goes fine there, otherwise we'll be reapplying from Australia.
Everything in Canada is paid off, or will be before the end of the month. It's feeling less and less stressful, and more exciting everyday.

Christmas is nearly here, which means we'll be saying good bye to Ohia fairly soon. We've tentatively scheduled his operation for January while Tia is visiting her parents. Farewell testosterone.

Still a whopping 50 days and counting.