For those of you that are friends of ours on facebook your newsfeed has likely reflected this time of uncertainty in the Kolb house.  A couple of weeks ago I commented on “Two weeks until Texas”, Seth wrote something like “only a few days of German”. Our world that always seemed pretty uncertain is most certainly uncertain these days.

When we arrived in October Seth was going to be here until the end of June. Then post requested that he arrive early and attempted to get him a language waiver to come in the end of May. When the waiver didn’t come through we weren’t disappointed because we were settled in here and enjoying every minute of it!

In early June Seth took a progress test that determined that he would need a little bit longer of german, thus an extension was filed. It’s a little bit tricky because the German dept is anxious to have a longer program but has not formally extended their program but rather has spent the last year extending most all of their students. Little do they realize that families are spinning with all of the changes. So, we embraced the extension, again thrilled for more time near our family and friends.

Last week Seth geared up for what was to be his final exam in German. He went in confident and prepared. He aced the speaking portion and was presented with a set of articles. He aced those as well. Because he did so well they advanced him to an even higher level article. The article was an obscure topic and more challenging that expected. A teacher explained to Seth that had he not done well on the first 4 he would have been bumped down to the easier level and could have achieved his score of 3 that he needed.   Instead he got a 3/2+….3 in speaking, 2+ in reading.  Had he had another article he would have had a chance of a 3.  I was bustling around prepping for the packers and keeping the kids in their routine when I got a call from him saying that he hadn’t passed.

So we went from half-packed and a couple of days before the packers arrived to canceling the packers and making a million phone calls to “uncancel” all of our services. Months of preparation went in to our original dates……..and now we wait in limbo.

The Embassy in Switzerland has initiated another waiver. This time one that appears to be going through. Without the waiver Seth tentatively will test on July 22nd. We have a packout scheduled for the 19th and 20th. I will do it while Seth is in German to save him 2 days of lost time in Bern now that we are going to be “late”. With the waiver we could have to pick up and go pretty quickly, except for the fact that the transportation department is telling us that a packout would be impossible on such short notice. Whew.  So while Seth plugs away at German, I am trying to decide what to do next. I am working on scheduling an additional “backup” packout date just in case things change again. And I am continuing to try to maintain some normalcy for the boys.

After 6 months of looking and waiting for a house to be available in Bern we have one waiting. Our biggest concern when the test didn’t go as expected was our housing here and our housing there. Our landlord here graciously allowed us to extend our lease through July. In Bern the house will be able to be held up to 2 weeks after our original arrival date.  I got notice yesterday that the painting is finished and the new floors (where needed) are being put in next week. The Embassy official has held off in sharing our new timeline because she feels like it will just cause undo stress if they know of the uncertainty- ie she probably fears they would find a new renter!

We still hope to see family in Texas on our way out of the country. Seth just finished canceling all of our tickets for tomorrow.  We will wait to see what happens with the waiver and timing to know what happens next. Jackson and I in particular have been super excited and talking about our trip to see family for months now. I hope that it can still happen but I am trying to let go knowing that there is very little we can do right now to make things happen.

I laugh now thinking that I was stressed a couple of weeks ago for our anticipated, planned move.  I never anticipated all of it being turned upside down and unknown. Each day we get a tidbit of information and have no idea when all of those tidbits will fit into something that looks like a plan. I find myself feeling like we are neither here nor there. We realize that our family and friends didn’t plan on us being around so they have there own things going on. It’s hard to plug in when we hate for everyone else to have to experience our rollercoaster.

So, we wait. We will keep you all posted!