Finding routines...

Wheeeh.... Moved in the beginning of August, travel around, went back to Finland, had a visitor for three weeks... Didn't exactly have a normal life in almost three whole months! Also couldn't really start figuring out what LIVING here means, since all was just having fun, seeing sights, eating out and so forth.

Well, I'll tell you one thing. Colorado is BEAUTIFUL. The mountains, the nature, the SUN! There is so much sun that someone from Finland can barely start to comprehend the fact that it is possible to have so many sunny days! :D What I love is that I can still hear people saying stuff like "isn't it a great weather today?!" even though every day is great weather! Everyone still appreciates it. I guess it goes on to show that it really is pretty important to your mental health ;)

Also, people here are pretty active. They run, mountain bike, hike, snowboard, ski... so guess what, we are in America, but I can barely see any fat people! Good for them! Also a lot less irritating when you don't have to mumble to yourself every 5 minutes that 'why can't people take better care of themselves'! ;)

So my husband got a job. YAY! But it's an hour drive away from us, so I guess moving is in order at some point. Hoping to save some money though, so that we could buy a place which would make a lot more sense than keep paying overpriced rent. 
So when he is working, I am housewifing. I was really happy to do it at first, and it was fun while he was still not working and was here to keep me company, but now I'm pretty bored... I'm not such a fan of my own company that I would enjoy a whole day by myself :D Sure, I can think of things to do, but it still means being alone.
Cooking, laundry, dog walking, cooking, cleaning..... a blast!

Also I'm getting in the middle of a culture shock. Not exactly shocked - i guess it sounds like something I didn't know yet would hit me suddenly - but more like difficulty adapting... We haven't made close friends yet, and I'm still figuring out how to take care of stuff myself. Small things bother me... Like American toilets. Or locks, which are so stupid they are pointless. Or how expensive stuff is. Or how there are no proper sidewalks. Or that people still use checks. I can continue. Should I?
Nah. Pretty sure the amount of sunshine will cover all these faults. And I will grow to accept them eventually.

I got my social security number recently, so that means a load of practical things to take care of. I need to take a written and driving test to get a Colorado driver's license. I should get my own debit card so I don't have to live on a weekly cash allowance from my hubby. And.... Look for a part time job....... I'd be happy to get a job, just the process of finding one sucks :D And when you are not exactly running out of money it is hard to get motivated. Also I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up :)
Spent the morning job hunting. The simplest online job applications will include about 100 questions about your personality like: "Do you get easily irritated when someone criticizes you? Do you feel like your work will never be appreciated?"  I feel like I sure got to know myself well this morning!

Time to get back to housewife duties :) 
To all my friends back home, MISS YOU GUYS.

Been a while! Today leaving Finland... for good!

Wow. What a bad blog writer have I been... last time 2 months ago! I guess that means moving to another country takes a lot of time! :D We were so busy the last few weeks before moving - getting rid of our stuff, moving for a while to stay with my parents, seeing people the last time - that I had no energy to think of writing. 

So we moved in the beginning of August. First day was hell. We arrived at our apartment - EMPTY apartment - at 6.30 p.m. And needed a place to sleep. So mattress shopping was the first thing to do! We wanted to just get a cheap futon, but it seemed to be a mission impossible! So by like 9.30 pm we were so dead (so dead that I bought two bottles of conditioner instead of a shampoo and a conditioner) that we just went to get a $90 air mattress. ...which our future guests are now welcome to sleep on ;)

The next few days were consumed by trying to get all the essentials; towels, food, kitchen stuff, you name it. It really sucks that you need A LOT of things just to live through normal life! And in the U.S., a car. So car shopping was fun. Trying to get a loan, it was unfathomable for the people that my husband had just "disappeared" from the face of the earth (U.S.) for 5 years. No information about him anywhere, so it was a bit tricky to get a loan. And we didn't have a local phone number yet, so filling the applications was practically impossible :D "International"....?? what's that??

So we did end up getting a car, and financed by a dealership, so we didn't have to deal with the banks who did not know what the word "international" meant.  Phones, bed, car, and some other stuff. We were settling down! Then came the roadtrip. The mother of all road trips if I may say. Driving without stopping from Denver CO to Reno NV. 1600 miles. 20 hours. (Google maps says 16, but when you include pee breaks and lunches and dog walking breaks it came to be 20....) 20 hours of FLAT GROUND. Nothingness.  Which was pretty awesome to see, but sometimes quite tiring. Our little Volkswagen was quite comfortable to drive though for such a long distance.  We stayed in Reno for a week and a half, and when leaving from there we had actually stayed there longer than in Denver! So then Reno felt like home! We were confused....

While in Reno I got the e-mail from the embassy to be in Finland on September 10th for my interview! That was SO MUCH faster than I ever imagined! So I arranged for my doctor's check up for 1 week before (need to take some blood tests so had to reserve a week for that), so then I had to fly back to Finland withing the next two weeks! 

Now I've been in Finland taking care of the visa stuff for 2,5 weeks. It took them 1,5 weeks to issue  my visa, and I got it the day before my flight was scheduled to leave :) I miss my husband so much and I'm happy to head back home and start settling down! I'm a little jealous that he has gotten such a good head start for getting familiar with stuff, and I'll be the newbie. 

I guess next update will be about my trip back home and our job hunt :) ....and the little things that will start to annoy me when I again miss Finland.... ;)

Getting on the plane in 4 hours.

Visa procedures so far

So in case anyone in the same situation ever ends up in this blog, here is how the process has gone so far.

1) Filled the I-130, Petition for an alien relative. For that some other papers were needed, such as proof of marriage and proof of an ongoing relationship. I had our marriage certificate and also a paper from the magistrate saying that we live in a same address. Also copies of both of our passports. And a passport style photo of both of us. Maybe something else, don't remember any more.

Sent this one out, I was prepared to wait for 5 months for it to be handled, but within two weeks from them receiving it I got my approval letter.

2) In the approval letter it says to wait for 30 days until contacting the National  Visa Center (NVC). Of course I didn't hear anything from them within that 30 days, so then I e-mailed them. In two days I got back an e-mail saying that I have to mail them a paper which states who is handling my case; is it me, or perhaps an agent or an attorney, and to which address my papers should be sent. Also it asked to pay the 88USD amount for the affidavit of support.

3) Sent out the paper, paid the 88USD. (online, from a U.S. bank account!). Once that was paid, I happened to need to contact them about my address change in Finland. I emailed them, but I did not get an answer "we have changed your address", instead, I got the next paper, saying that I should pay the 230USD visa fee. (the paper had the new, correct address). So I paid that. In the receipt there were directions to the next steps, what I need to collect for the visa applicaton.

4) Sent out the affidavit of support papers, which actually required that my husband filed his foreign earned taxes with the IRS... that was a lot of work. 

Now I'm collecting the documents for the visa papers (birth certificate, marriage certificate, criminal record from the police) and once I have them, I'm good to go and send those out!

So altogether until this point it has taken 2 months. Not bad. I hope to get an interview appointment for the consulate quite quickly, since everything else has been so fast. So I don't quite think the 8-12 month processing time estimate will be true in my case. 

So take heart, all you in the same situation! Make sure your papers are PERFECT when you send them out, and that will speed up the process. I'm sure there are also differences depending on which country you are immigrating from, and Finland as a small western country probably is easy to come from...

Good luck to all who are doing the same thing!

Getting rid of stuff!

Ahh.... We are in good speed of getting rid of stuff. We will be bringing only some clothes, a few books and some photos and some single items that have special meaning to us. Also two paintings and a small table. Those last three things I think we have to ship, so I'm in a process of trying to figure out what is the cheapest way to ship them from Finland to the U.S.

Other than that, we have already sold most of the big things like furniture and stuff, and we still have a little home flea market at our house this coming Saturday, and I hope the rest of the small stuff will be gone then.

It's amazing how much things accumulate in your apartment.... Already about two weeks ago we put aside things that we knew we wouldn't need to use anymore before we go. And it didn't even hurt to get rid of them! hmmm... and why did I even own them in the first place?! I hope to be more careful to not collect so much unneeded little things in our new place.

KISS. Keep it simple, stupid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also got our dog's kennel now. It's GINORMOUS. I measured him, I knew which size we should get, I knew the measurements. But somehow it didn't look so big when just looking at the measuring tape. I went to pick it up from the post office, and I almost fainted seeing the size of it! Thank goodness my hubby was with me, so I had help in getting it home. Well, at least our dog will be comfortable :) It makes me happy, I've kinda really worried about how he will be, but now that I see that he walked happily into the kennel and fits there perfectly, I feel a little more relieved.

And visa stuff is moving along again. Sent the affidavit of support papers. Funny thing is, that it asks how much my husband makes money CURRENTLY. Well, CURRENTLY he is still working. But not when we move to the U.S. So we didn't lie when putting the CURRENT info there. But it makes no sense, since it will  have no meaning when we move. Well, whatever, I will have a joint sponsor if needed, so if there are questions in the visa interview, I have more papers to hand out to them.

Also paid the visa fee and now I'm waiting for my papers from the Finnish police to arrive, then I can send out my visa papers! WHOA!! then all I need to do is WAIT. Crazy. Actually this has been a quite fast process. I started in mid May, and two months later I'm ready to send out the last papers. I would assume that I will get my interview appointment quite quickly, if this continues to go the way it has so far.

And yeah, we leave in THREE AND A HALF WEEKS!

Mixed feelings

This Sunday was a beautiful summer day. We sat outside on the yard at a friend's house, and it was warm and sunny. We left to go home at 10 pm, and it was still sunny and warm. We sat in an bus at 10.30pm and I was looking outside, we were talking about moving. I was really excited, but at the same time I could not stop looking at the scenery outside the window, and thinking how much I love this place. Everything is familiar. I saw a bus number 65 and thought "I know by heart where that goes. When we move, I won't know anything."
It was such a beautiful night and I realized how I'm really jumping into unknown. There will be no white summer nights, there will be no buses that I would know where they go.
Tears just starting flowing down my cheeks. I was not sad, though. I don't even really know what the feeling was. Because at the same time I was also really looking forward to our leaving.

Some days I have strong feelings to one direction or the other. Some days I feel numb.

I'm scared, but at the same time I know I'm not alone. I will have my husband who has promised to take care of me, and also our dog is coming along. Our whole small family is together. That's what makes it a home, right??

I've been listening to this on repeat. Thanks to this song, I can handle my feelings a bit better.

On a more practical note:

Kennel ordered
Dog insurance canceled
Home insurance bought
Bank chosen
Affidavit of support fee paid!

I was ready to explode again because of the unclear directions on the NVC (national visa center, btw) website about paying the affidavit of support fee and the visa fee. It says on one place that it is possible to pay both of them at the same time, but then in a different place it says that this option is only for attorneys and agents. So I was like how am I supposed to now know what to do?!
Patience is a virtue..... Logging into the online payment site, I was only given the option of paying just the affidavit of support fee. 
So... better just to be patient and see how things turn out than to panic... How many times have I learned that and still don't apply it?! :D

So. Now waiting for the payment to go through so we can send out the papers.

Moving along... slowly but surely

So I quit my job yesterday, so that's cool.

Still waiting to get the latest visa related payment done... I hate when stuff depends on other people and not just me. If it was just up to me, my papers would be sitting at the NVC already.

Learned that it's cheaper to keep our home insurance even though we won't have a home anymore, instead of taking a separate insurance for our luggage. Good to know.

I also learned that there are rattlesnakes in the nearby mountain park by our house. Also I learned that their heads can still bite you up to one hour after being separated from their body. Creepy, but kinda awesome.

I'm not exactly looking forward to our first week, even less the first day. We will land in Denver at 4pm, and I have been making a list of stuff that we'll still need to buy on the same day.

A mattress

Blanket

Sheets

Towels

Dog bowls

Dog food

I guess that and some takeout food will carry us through until the next day, when we have to go car shopping :D 

Also probably purchasing some kitchenware would be appropriate at that point... it's C R A Z Y to have to start from basically nothing! I bet no matter how hard i think we'll end up going, "oh crap, we'd really need a ....."

Oh yeah, and a vacuum cleaner. Definitely a week one purchase. Black dog, which sheds a lot, and a light tan carpet = CLEANING HELL. Why oh why the carpet...................

And oh yeah, for my friends who want to visit, we really will have a guest room. Here is the floor plan for the bigger place we ended up with :)

 

Visa stuff. ugh.

So the letter telling of the approval of my I-130 petition said that I should allow 30 days to pass before contacting the National Visa Center about my case. So I did, nothing happened during that 30 days. Then I e-mailed them, and the same day I already got the instructions needed. I needed to tell them the address they should send my mail to regarding this case, and got a request to pay for the handling of the affidavit of support form, .....needs to be paid from a US account. Real easy when you still live in Finland......

So now we're chasing down some relatives whose account information we could use.... And the one time something is urgent, it's impossible to get a hold of anyone! It stinks, because before this is paid, the case is not moving anywhere.

It's nice that I have had to become an expert on this, since now I can help others. The family who are also moving around the same time is going through this same stuff... So I felt good that I was able to relate to the wife my experiences and what I have found out, and what is going to go down next.

Also I got some help back, because I had been wondering if there really is no other way for me to stay in the country a bit longer than the 90 days that the visa waiver program allows - no use in asking the American embassy here in Helsinki, they are less than helpful.... So our friend had contacted a lawyer who deals with this stuff, and I got my confirmation that I am doing this the right way; at least I won't worry that I could have done something differently.

There is so much to remember to do when moving out of a country... cancel apartment, cancel electric, cancel home insurance, dog insurance, cancel TV, this and that! 

But in the middle of all this I have a little break to look forward to tomorrow, a Garden Party concert including Charlotte Gainsbourg and Regina Spektor. Yay!!