Big Day

After this particular day, I have decided to make a plan and quarter it.  Living in a new country is exhausting and everything takes so long as I've usually never done it before.  For all my detail oriented female friends, I thought I'd document a day of my life here in Cyprus.  It has certainly been a struggle to get my head around some of the logistics of school start and finish times combined with Anna's sleep times and peak hour traffic.  Being our first full week here, it can only get easier.  OK, here goes my Wednesday:

6am wake up, breakfast, lunches etc..
7am ALL in the car (had to wake up Anna; she comes in her PJ's and coat)
7.15am arrive at school, take Sam in and get him settled, go to office
for admin stuff
8am back in the car, feeling a bit over confident as I haven't been lost for over 24hrs.
I take a wrong turn first up, end up in alley ways and one
way streets, get horribly lost & literally drive around in circles with no bearing on where on earth I am and then finally ask for help at a petrol station and find that I'm only 500m from home.  AARRGGHH!!!  All that took 45mins instead of 10 - what a waste of time.
9am - Anna and I both starving, make porridge, do morning house stuff
10am - realize that I've missed the ladies group I was going to attend.  No problem, so I take Anna for a walk up the street.  I need a pair of shoes (air freight still hasn't arrived so we're all living out of a suitcase still) so I walk up the street. Only 10mins walk from our house and I've got 6 different shoe shops around me including an ECCO store. Yippee.  I walk in and within minutes Anna has 4 very bored shop attendants staring at her trying to make her smile.  She bursts into tears instead (as she is doing with almost every new person she meets).  Shoe shopping is suddenly not so fun anymore.
11.30am - back home after stopping for a few groceries and discovering
where to fill up our water cooler bottles (that had been perplexing me for
days; it's amazing what one can find when on foot). 
11.35am - Had some chill out time with Anna out in the sun with a ball. (a pleasant 18 degrees).  Feel like an OK Mum again. I've missed not being around for Anna lately but I think I'm back.
12pm - make lunch and ring Mum & Dad
1pm - get in the car to collect kids from school
2pm - drive from school to Ross' office and get horribly lost again due to
reading the map upside down (derrr).
3pm - all off to inspect a few more houses to rent.  Getting closer finally. Still another month before we move in & our stuff arrives.
5pm - return home, kids all revoltingly tired, fighting, grizzly, thirsty and downright disgusting (but who can blame them?).
5.10pm - myself, Jess & Angus get back in the car on the way to Valentines Day party for school.
5.30pm - miraculously found a parking space and arrive at school on time
5.30 - 7.00pm - School party was great.  I volunteered on one of the activity tables (which was great avoidance of standing around having nobody to talk to) and the kids got into it and had a great time.
7.15pm - drive home and put kids to bed.
8.15pm - have my dinner whilst we put together a pros and cons list of the 2 houses we saw today and liked.
9.00pm - reply to an e-mail about getting a live-in maid (wow! what will I do with myself?)
10pm - de-brief on my day by e-mailing some mother buddies who might be somewhat interested in the minutiae my day!
Are you still with me? 

Mum and Jessie after the valentines day party