the interview is at 10:15, downtown, so getting up at 6:30 leaves plenty of time, or does it?
it depends on a few things, is all the paper work in order? did we remember everything?
the answer is mostly yes. but with us immigration application, mostly not good enough, we are terrified (since they warn so much) that lack of certain paper work may deny a hard worked at and expensive application, so mostly is definitely not good enough.
its around 7 am when we go one last time on the things we need to bring.
copy of our request, check; proof of life together, check; birth certificates, check; passports, check; personal identification; check (only after i found mine in the car that very morning, and was without it (my driver's license) for the last week, but check; photos of us, check, last 2 pay stubs, eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee; lets begin investigating why we (I stress we) failed on this point, who was in charge of this only item?, and who was in charge of the rest?....
you have one guess (hint, it's not Alla).
so its around 8 something and we rush to aurora which is 30 minutes east of Cleveland and could not have been more far away that down town. lucky there is no traffic heading that way.
till a month ago, the pay stub came as a stub. we swapped systems to get it on line. the registration slip is on my desk. I find the slip and start logging in to the new system. today is 2/18 and during the process i find to my horror that the temp password expiration, end on 2/17....of course, it could not have been any other way. lucky that i am more lucky than smart, and there is a stub just below the slip (which i didn't see before); so I am covered. i quickly find the slip of the previous month (which was in my bag).
another (and last) item that was missing is a print of the blogs. since I wrote about our meetings and what's happening, I was certain the blogs were the best proof of our life together. how ever when trying to track items, i found that i am mentioning what we are doing, but now how I feel and things like that (its not a mooshi blog, or not real moosh, to be exact), but i still gathered a bunch of events and wanted to print them (it wasn't the last minute, i promise you i still had 4 minutes to spare). and print i hit, and the office printer, which is usually in great working order, decides to deprint me, prints one page and goes into processing mode. i suspect it maybe my lap top, and try it from another place with same result. so no blog. but no time and we head west again , and no traffic and we make it to down town with 30 minutes to spare. our usual parking lot is full, so we find another, and still have time for a breakfast bagel before we cross the street in a freezing wind to the immigration building a.k.a the halls of destiny.
the security gourd asks if Greenberg is a German name, i say Romanian , since my mom, also a born Greenberg is from Romania, how ever this was a Russian Greenberg. the security gourd is from Romania, and tells me how expensive Bucharest turned out to be, we agreed its a beautiful country (though I have not been there ,,,,yet), and quickly we make our way to the 5th floor.
I spot a no drinks, food or cell phone in the WAITing room, so i step out of the room to finish my hot chocolate.
we place our invitation in the place where it says place invitation here, a dude comes and picks up the invitation that was already there and we wait some more.
we are watching commercials on TV with short breaks for some program, and quickly the commercials are back on.
then the dude comes again. Alla asks how do they know that there is a pending invitation and i respond that they hire a guy with a short bladder, so he goes #1 every 30 minutes and gets the invitations on the way.
you need to understand , that this green card process is mostly simple, but the 10 percent which isn't simple is exhausting. you are simply not sure what exactly to fill out. if you call the CIS they tell you one thing, if you call again and speak to another agent, they tell you another. with so many warnings on rejection if ANYTHing is out of order, we were worried. we considered hiring an immigration lawyer, but a fee of 2500$ (not including the application fee of 1350$) was hard to swallow, we passed on the immigrationMan (this is our not hired web site address). with triple and quadruple checks with out immigration consultant Inna, we finished the request, but never certain.
so when the #1 guy returns and passes by our application, we both hold our breath in unison and then hew pauses, we don't even flinch, and YES, he picks it up....
a few minutes later a woman steps out and summons us in, she tells us where to go and we think she is a secretary, cause she doesn't lead us, but she enters the office and announces her self as the interviewer. she had us swear in an oath , of the truth , the whole truth and nothing but the truth and the interview begins.
you've all seen the movie green card, and other movies of this sort, i have seen those as well and i was surprised not to find a big mirror and angry cop type person doing the inquiry. but instead a relaxed woman. does this mean movies are all false?
she begins with background questions, to validate information such as names, addresses and such. than asks me a series of questions about my past. have I delivered drugs, am I a terrorist, spy, participated in a genocide, have criminal record, that sort of questions. i am listening to the question seriously and answer no on all of them (Alla, i found later almost burst in laughter from the way I responded, saying no and nodding all the time).
then she asks Alla on how we met and how the relationship progressed (no need to repeat what she said, its all in previous blogs....:)), after wards comes the living together information. we show here out joint bank accounts, joint insurance and lease and then the photos.
in a mega effort we pick out the best 100 photos of us as a couple (we have about 134 to chose from) and some photos of Alla with my family, mine with hers and all together. our inquisitor flips through them all, occasionally asking, where was this taken. she appears honestly curious. i hope but don't know if she really is) and the interview becomes a conversation on snow mobiling, michagan and Alaska (since we have many joint photos from both places).
in the end she practically announces that the process is done (all there is left is a security check) so unless i have a criminal past, which i don't, than i passed (we passed), which means i am a month away from a green card and all our hard work on the documents was successful.
lemon cakes are really yummy, i would have not imagined that lemon can be sweet, i really like them.
lets return a few days ago to Wyoming, after another day when i am woken up before 6 am. this time the day ends early (lucky for us the pharmacist wants to go home early) so at 2:30, we head up and have a few our to see Wyoming.
we pass salt river, which is a pure water river, not sure where the name comes from, then pass the largest and longest reptilian in the world. the snake river looks nice and we drive along it in a narrow canyon and pass some nice small towns (all towns are small in Wyoming). we make it to Jackson hole, which is a known ski town that does not look like a ski town. true, it has small houses, lots of wooden buildings and all the parts that do make a ski town, but something is not write, its like its too wide spread, to much fast food to be considered a ski town.
we pass by a few more elk horn arches (smaller than the one we saw before) and continue till we reach the Grand Teton national park. the Tetons are a range of mountains, which look nice in the cold but kind of clear day. this is a great place for hiking in the summer, not now though, so we drive by the Tetons and keep going till we reach yellow stone national park, which is close from the south entrance (which we are in right now). you can only go in with snow mobiles and we don't have those.
oh, Jackson hole news paper had a special on snow mobiles. 1-2 10%, 3-4 15%,5- 20%- who buys 5 snow mobiles? are they disposable snowmobiles?.
since i had a blast of an after noon in Wyoming, and actually had the travel bug again ( if it was up to me we would be keeping driving till Montana) i can officially make Wyoming state #32.
I would like very much to visit yellow stone and see old faithful, i will have to come back for that. the questions is. if old faithful (the gazer) erupts and there are no tourists to see it, does it make a sound?
we passed by interesting forest views, a herd of buffalo, a caged herd of elk, lots of ranches, a fenced herd of horses. a unique tundra looking red bush, which glimmered in the after noon sun (the camera cannot capture that). we continued and took more photos of the Tetons and passed by the Jackson hole ski resort and made our way back to star valley. I dropped Mr real-estate at the hotel where he would remain for the next way and headed back to salt lake (had to make it on time for the interview...see few pages above). another 3 hours of night driving through lovely (but unseen) Forrest and i stopped in Logan , Utah for a night sleep at a cheap motel.
a Pakistani man greets me at the door, i check in and crash right away, the next morning the same Pakistani, greets me, i ask him if he ever goes home; he says management is making him do 24 hours shifts(but he is no doc), times are hard he explains. i see why, this hotel is out side of a ski town (where everyone sleeps in the city) plus it smells like cows (from a ranch across the street), so naturally times are hard. not to mention that in general, economic times are hard. i check out after a very plain breakfast and after seeing the sing saying- start your day with a comfort sun shine breakfast. the breakfast here is as warm and comfort as the weather (I stole this line from a very known movie, but its ok, you are allowed to steal from a thief, can any one guess the name, does any one read this much?). i drove the rest of the way to the airport that has no gas stations any where near it, so i had to double back and find one. and flew to Chicago.
on the flight i fell asleep on take off, like I usually do (and probably woke the whole plain (snoring)), and woke up during flight where the flight attendant ask if i "sleeping beauty" would like a drink. she was not sarcastic, i indeed was sleeping, although snoring like the wolf. so i took my diet coke. later in the flight i asked if i can have another diet coke, and she said no. I was shocked and said ok, they never say no. she was kidding and gave me my needed narcoketics. i wrote it a few times before, they hire flight attendant with a sense of humor on this airline, better than all the rest.
in Chicago (layover) the stewardess while doing the security announcements, had a big hiccup, to the amusement of everyone on board, you just had to be there, she was embarrassed and laughed on that issue all along the long flight (47 minutes or so).
in Chicago i saw a guy with a smudged for head, didn't think much of it, he might have touched something dirty and wiped his brow, it can happen to anyone (and did happen to me on more than 1 occasion), and then i saw it again and again. it was odd, finally curiosity won and i asked the hiccup lady who told me about lent.
its a Christian thing, you paint a cross with ash on your forehead for ash Wednesday (an annual event) then begin a fest of a week for which you pass on something important to you as away of sacrifice (favorite food , favorite something...) click here http://www.americancatholic.org/newsletters/cu/ac0204.asp for details.
we landed, and i made it home, less than 12 hours before the interview.
good night and don't get hiccups
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