First, I want to apologize. I know many of you have followed my blog and you have walked along the journey (to the USA) with me, and then, once I actually do arrive in the USA, I abandon you! That was not my intent, I assure you.
However, SO much has happened since I have written that I decided to break it up into parts. Today, I will talk about the whole moving to the USA part. So, let's begin:
I moved on September 14th. The night before, Jim flew into Detroit and rented a mini-van and drove to come get me. Because of his awesome corporate discount, we managed to cut down a lot on expenses for the move. This meant however, that I had to purge a lot of my stuff. I have moved 3 times in the last 3 years. Luckily, each time I was of the mindset that it was easier to give it away or throw it out if I wasn't going to use it, then lug it to another house. So, all of my worldly possessions fit into a mini-van and the back of my Dodge Caliber. Deciding to do it this way, meant that Jim and I would have to drive seperately. Thankfully, my nephews had an extra set of walkie talkies that we used to help stay in communication. We are also thankful that Jim's parents live in Illinois and that we had a place to rest so we didn't have to make the 12 hour trip in one day.
When we arrived at the border, they let Jim pull over with me. We had a contingency plan if he had to continue on, but we hoped that since I could be up to two hours at the border, that we didn't have to use it. I pulled up to the border and showed him my K-1 visa and he instructed me to go into the building for secondary processing. Thanks to visajourney I was not surprised by any of this. I told them Jim was with me so he said he would pull him in too. We had to sign in and take a number. About 15 minutes later our number was called. The border patrol officer had me give him some info and then we had to sit down again. After a few more times of this, along with a picture and fingerprints (I have been fingerprinted so many times I better never do anything wrong!) we were on our way. The whole process took about 45 minutes or so, but I walked out with an I-94 document in my passport. This meant the clock was ticking and we had 90 days to get married.
It was a LONG drive and at the end of two long driving days, neither of us felt like unloading the vehicles but we did. (And a lot of those boxes stayed right where we left them for a long time!)
The days leading up to the wedding itself were really hectic. I will tell you all about that next time, but for now why not watch our wedding video.
www.vimeo.com/m/53368495
