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We are somehow managing to get everything ready for Big Jim's departure Sunday. He set off this morning at 6am for Seville, where the closest Pakistani consulate is located, to get his travel visa. Thank goodness there is a consulate there; otherwise, he would have had to travel to Madrid. I am assuming all is going well there, or I would have heard from him by now. Our efforts are being complicated by the fact there are two Spanish national holidays this week. Yesterday was Constitution Day, in celebration of, well obviously, the post-Franco constitution. ETA celebrated by setting off seven small bombs across the country, including one in Malaga city. Today is technically not a holiday, but the schools are still closed in the village. No sense in making them go back for one day, I suppose, because tomorrow is the second holiday, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. I ordered Big Jim some books from amazon.co.uk: a good translation of the Qur'an, which he is interested in reading in his spare time, and an Urdu/English dictionary and phrasebook, which I'm sure will come in handy. I had them shipped to our friend T.'s house in Frankfurt because with the aforementioned holidays here added to the completely erratic post delivery, I reckoned they had no chance of arriving before Big Jim left. Big Jim flies to Frankfurt Sunday and will stay with T. until his second flight leaves Monday morning. He will arrive in Islamabad Tuesday morning at 6am....yes, it is a lot of travel to Pakistan. After the visa is sorted, Big Jim only really needs to worry about packing. That shouldn't be too difficult....only one suit required for the odd occasional when he meets with clients. Most of the time, he will be in jeans, traveling from work site to work site, monitoring and reporting on progress. He had a similar job a few years ago in Frankfurt for a company that was building a large data hotel from the ground up....he loves this kind of work. We continue to read up on Pakistan. The weather is almost identical to that here (it has turned more chilly here in the past couple days, including snow on top of Maroma), as is the vegetation: jacaranda, bougainvillea, and jasmine. There are a few good English language bookstores in Islamabad, free Internet cafes in post offices, and carpet shops galore. On one info site we found, a stereotypical American visitor lamented, however, there are no McDonald's in Islamabad. There are KFCs and, believe it or not, a Subway sandwich shop. I suspect Big Jim will stay clear of those and just focus on the curries. :-) More later..... hasta luego, mylifeinspain