What a whirlwind!

(Beside: That´s me in Krabi, enjoying my limejuice!) I´ve been back in Germany for 5 days now. I left for Hungary almost as soon as I got back from Singapore. Here´s a newsflash on my whereabouts.

11th of September (10pm) - Arrived in Frankfurt airport. Rented a car and drove back arrived about midnight 12th September. Unpacked 1 month´s of clothing and washed the dirty stuff. Re-packed for Budapest, Hungary.

13th Sept to 17th Sept - We were in Budapest, Hungary for Stephan´s friend´s wedding on the 15th of Sept. Its a beautiful city, will blog about that in detail soon.

18th September till today - Trying to organise my house, clearing 1 month´s of dust and stock up on food etc. I just spent 3 days ironing and today I was at the ironing board for 5 hours in a row! There´s still stuff hanging on the balcony to dry, which means I have more ironing to come, but I´ve finished the bulk of it already. THANK GOD!

Sorry for having not updated my blog for such a long time! I miss updating too. Helps me to slow down, reflect and think about what God has been doing in my life. But I really haven´t been able to sort out my photos etc or just re-settle into Germany. *Sigh* Before I upload photos, thought I should share some incidences, which were nothing short of divine intervention.

1) Air ticket miracle

• First mistake: Wrong date of flying. We were at the airport on the 11th of September, but Stephan misread the air ticket! He thought that the date was the 11th whereas it was supposed to be the 10th! Plus our ticket was real cheap, hence we had no other option when we missed our flight. Not only would there be no refund or transfer, our ticket had officially expired, cos it was only opened for 1 month!

• Second mistake: 15mins later in checking in. The lady at the counter, a german interpreter helped us to look for other options, which was to ask SIA to let us fly one day later for free out of goodwill. However, the flight was fully-booked and we were put on standby (total of 3 passengers incl. us). In case we couldn´t get on this flight, we would have to be put on the next flight out of Singapore (10 hours later) and we would still have to get the approval of the Frankfurt airport to see if we could still fly in, since our flight would have expired. Plus pay a penalty of maybe 200€? We waited super anxiously for 30 mins before we went to the counter to enquire again. Turns out that we were 15 mins later than the required time (1pm instead of 115pm - which was what the german lady told us). There was a furry of last-min phone calls by the ground staff to communicate that we were going on the flight etc. I´ve never been so stressed at the airport before!
  

Hallelujah! Everything worked out so well and double blessing, we were on the Boeing 777! Instead of the 747 - which would be what we would have had we gone one day earlier! Wow!

2) Visa miracle

I was in Singapore when I realized that my 1-year visa was going to expire on the 13th of Sept and I was only reaching back Germany on the 11th! That was another cause of stress with the air-ticket cos if I didn´t get back in time, I would not have been able to extend my visa in time. Plus we were flying off for Budapest on the 13th of Sept, so I technically really needed a valid visa before we flew again. What happened? We went straight to the office on the 12th and got an immediate visa extension! The first time we made my visa one year ago, I had to wait 2 weeks for everything to be processed. Can this not be God? I don´t think so! The lady at the Landrasamt was so amazed that I completed my integration so fast too, she said that normally people take longer than 2 years to get it done.

3) Financial Blessing

Yah! Stephan and I were blessed by dear daddy at the airport as an advanced Christmas present. We were so thankful for the timely blessing, cos we were bursting our pockets with our one-month trip to Singapore and later Budapest. Thanks Daddy for your generosity.

Yah, photos come later...... stay in tune!