The last three weeks

 

It's funny but the simple fact that I am leaving the UK, again this time for the foreseeable future, and it isn't really sinking in. I am just doing one thing at a time. Greatly organised, but kind of oblivious of the big picture. This makes sense, my attitude to the enormity of this all since October at least was to try as best I can to ignore the emotion and stress. This culminated on the day of the interview, but apart from that day, and maybe the medical test a week earlier, I have just plodded along. Just doing what I should do, but making it part of my life. Important but just part of my existence at that point in time.

 

Its looking back and analysing it, that it seemed so easy. Lets not go into the money of it all which was terrible, but the time was very much on our side. "It can take years", they all cry. Well on one hand the first part of the application, the I-130 petition was filed on 15th April 2012, and a year and two months later I fly out to the USA. That aside, its worth remembering that we were travelling for the first 6 months of the application and, the time taken between then and the second filing was largely our postponement. The slowest part of this process was our gathering of documents and proofs.

 

To analyse how much the US Visa Service delayed us and it is a total of 114 days or 3.75 months. This breaks down as follows:

 

15.04.12:   I-130 Filed

30.04.12:  I-130 Approved

 

05.04.13: Final documents filed

24.04.13: Embassy Confirms receipt of documents

02.05.13: Notification of interview date

03.06.13: Medical Examination

11:06.13: Interview at Embassy

17.06.13: Visa arrives in the post

13.07.13: Fly to the USA

 

If we weren't travelling the gap between I-130 and the final filing of documents would have considerable shortened the time of the process. In fact it took Sarah less than a month to have a place and a job, so the total application time is about 5 months. The process is quite painless, when you come out the other side ok.

 

Now fresh worries; work! I have very little experience at finding work outside of a city. My usual method of hitting some agencies hard, getting into a temp role and dazzling them enough to give me a permanent position is not going to work this time. This time it is cold calling and self promotion. I know I am able, and I know I have the attitude to make it happen, but who can fail to have some self doubt? Perfect employment records can always be an extended run of luck that may now run out.

 

I have just booked a hotel near JFK for the 13th July. I wondered whether to get one in town, and enjoy New York for an evening. However, for some reason the lugging of two checked in bags and one carry on all the way to Penn Station and back again the next morning, staying in a cheap place, then lugging them back for the 9:30am flight the next day seemed less attractive than a free shuttle two miles from the airport. If I feel fit, I will get the train into Manhattan on the Saturday. If I feel jet lagged and want to crash, then I will feel no guilt about a nice hotel in Queens. The cost was in fact only £20 more than a room in a hostel in Manhattan. I think I have made the right decision. 

 

Maybe the highlight of the trip will be the final flight from Juneau to Haines across on the small twin engine plane as shown below. What a way to enter into the place I will be calling home for a long long time.

 

One thing that's in the back of my mind, and people occasionally ask, "how long will I be in America". I'm married and I'm a permanent resident, and if I don't think about this being a life choice forever, it was not worth bothering with. Flights from America are expensive in the lower 48, but even more costly in Alaska which has little links internationally. So I guess it will be a long time before I travel again. But that's what I've taken on. Then again, I haven't lost the world, I have gained a whole new continent. Of the whole of the America's I've only visited two countries, the USA and Peru. There is so much yet to see and do. Unlike John Lennon, my life began at 40.