Everything is falling into place

For the past month, we have been waiting on pins and needles to hear if Blake could stay in Sweden with me. You see, his scholarship ended as mine began, and so he had gone to the Migration Board and asked for a Visitors Permit that would allow him to legally be here until the end of October. In the mean time, we moved to Stockholm, and he began looking for a job. Well, he got a great job offer at a structural engineering firm (Tyrens), but they said he had to get a Residence Permit before he started. Ok, fine. So he called to look into that and the person he talked to bluntly said that in no possible way could he get a Residence Permit while on a Visitors Permit, and that he would have to go back to the states for 3 months and wait before he could even come back to Sweden. Great. My scholarship is only 9 months to begin with, so it would have been pointless for him to try and stay, and it would have sucked, big time if we had to be apart for another year.

So he decided to just give it a try and apply for a Residence Permit anyways, which was a hassle because first his job had to get approval to hire him. You see, with Sweden being part of the EU, his company had to prove that they weren't discriminating against any other EU citizen when they hired him. That got approved, but it took a few weeks.

Once that was approved, we took a trip down to Norrköping, which is a 2 hour train ride south of Stockholm to apply for his Residence Permit. You would think that the main Migration Board office would be in Stockholm, it being the largest city and the capital of Sweden and all, but nope, that would make too much sense. But anyways, it was good excuse to take a day off and to see a new city, since all we knew about Norrköping was that they speak with a whiny accent. He could have just mailed it in, but we felt better talking to someone in person. Nothing was approved that day, but the lady at the counter seemed positive that it would be approved and told us we would know within a week. So we just walked around Norrköping, which is a really cute city, although there isnt much to do there.

In the mean time, we basically can't plan anything in our life, including finding a new apartment (our lease ends at the end of November), planning a trip over Thanksgiving to Doha to visit Molly and Clifton, or anything because we didnt know if Blake could get back into the country if we left, and I didnt want to commit to an apartment thinking Blake was going to cover half and spend all of my stipend on rent! One good thing about Blake not working though was that it gave him time to officially finish and submit his thesis! So congrats Blake!

So we waited to hear back something from the migration board, and Blake sent an email to the lady in charge of his case. He gets an email back on Tuesday that says, "I am glad to tell you your case is ready, so please contact The Migration Board where you are living." Ummm... are they glad because it is approved, or just because they finished one of the things in their inbox and can move on with their job? We werent sure, so I gave Blake a big kiss the next day just in case he showed up at the Migration Board and they escorted him to the nearest airport to forbid him from coming back into Sweden ever again or something.

Luckily though, when he showed up they gave him a Residence Permit! Hooray! Today he is getting his personal number, and then he just has to do a few random little things like open a bank account so that he can get paid and then he can start working!!

With the good news in hand, we started looking at apartments. Our main priority was to get a 1 bedroom apartment (or as they say here, a 2a, which means that it has two rooms- a bedroom and a living room... so confusing!) close to downtown Stockholm. We knew this was going to cost quite a bit more, but after living in the suburbs for 2 months now, we decided to splurge and actually live in the city that we wanted to live in. One of my co-workers is moving back to China, but is keeping his apartment, so he offered to sublease it to me for a good deal, but it was still outside the city. So we declined, and on our first visit, we both fell in love with a place in the exact neighborhood (Södermalm) that we wanted to live in. It is in the heart of everything, and the apartment has a lot of character. Also, we can move in on Sunday. We have our current apartment until the end of November, so we can take our time moving in. We are so excited about it!

And to top things off, tonight I am going to a Okkervil River concert! Yeah, I would say things are going pretty good right now...