Exploring Baltimore - Hampden

A couple of weekends ago Pollo and I drove down to Baltimore to meet our friends and celebrate their new engagement and we met up in a neighborhood north of the Inner Harbor District called Hampden.

We had no idea what to expect, but from Google Maps, we saw that the restaurant was on a street with other little shops and restaurants to it seemed a great spot to stop and eat and hang out.

We went to lunch at Golden West Cafe that the interwebs said had a lot of vegan options for my friend and when we arrived we all felt that we were in an artsy neighborhood in Berkeley or LA. The restaurant was quirky and filled with a mishmash of retro decorations that somehow went really well together in its randomness.

The food was sightly latin inspired with lots of guacamole and salsa many options and quite delicious.  At the front of the restaurant they have a garage door that they can hoist open so that there is an indoor/outdoor feel.

After lunch we walked around the neighborhood and poked into a few different shops and took in the street art until we came upon a shop, Dangerously Delicious, that just sold pie! It was like a dream come true.  I ordered a Chocolate Chess Pie that I took warm with whipped cream that was dangerously large, like a whole quarter piece, when it arrived at our table.  The crust was a little tough, but over all it was a delightful pie experience.

We had a nice time wandering around and then sitting around on the porch of the pie shop just chatting and eating pie. It was fun to explore a new neighborhood and see all that it had to offer and catch up with friends.  Next time we head down to Baltimore I think we'll try another location in the Hampden area.

Pollo Citizen!

August was a momentous month for us!

Pollo was eligible to apply for US citizenship since June of 2015, but due to mostly financial reasons he didn´t apply until spring of this year.  Again, given the horror stories that one hears about people trying to become citizens and a friend´s recent long battle for citizenship, we were a little worried about the whole process.  Luckily for us, the most trying thing was killing lots of trees as we printed out document after document to make sure we had enough proof that Pollo and I are actually married and have been since he moved here.

The entire timeline is a little bit of a blur for me, but basically Pollo applied for citizenship in the spring and the first step is to get called in so USCIS or whomever, can do a biometrics scan.  This was strange because he had jsut gotten one the year before when he had to apply for permanent permanent residency.  I guess there is a lot of fraud? Pollo probably got called for biometrics a month after he sent in his application (with a huge payment to USCIS). 

After you get called for biometrics, you get called for your citizenship interview with an officer at USCIS.  This waiting step can take up to 9 months in some cases, or more.  Pollo got his interview paperwork in June or July, just a month or so after he completed his biometrics!  We were worried that it would coincide with a family reunion in Hawaii, but we were lucky and they scheduled him for his interview the week we got back.

Pollo was very nervous for his interview and endlessly studied all the resources that USCIS and Homeland Security provides for potential citizens to study and he reviewed all the questions that the officer might ask him.  We killed a couple more trees so we could print out all our documents again and he prepared photo albums and lined up original birth and marriage certificates and he had it all ready to go with him for his grand citizenship interview on Friday.

His interview lasted 10 minutes. And they didn't look at any papers.

Pollo said that he was called into the officer's office and they asked him to verify some information and they gave him the US history test that consisted of 6 questions that he passed with flying colors and then he had the English test.  The English test consisted of having to read a sentence from the Constitution out loud and then write down a sentence that the officer read to him.  Once that was through the officer said that he passed and asked Pollo if he could go to an oath ceremony on Monday.  Pollo said, sure! And he waited another 5 minutes while the officer got the correct paperwork with the date and time of the ceremony and then Pollo was out the door in a grand total of 15 minutes, flat.

On Monday we drove together to the USCIS offices in Philadelphia and we got there very early and they just tell you to sit and wait until they call your group.  Every once in a while we would hear clapping from the ceremony room and while we were waiting we watched the people gather.  There was a couple who looked like they were in their 80s with the husband moving like a tortoise and the wife who was more agile, but never impatient with him.  There was a woman there by herself who came with her adorable 1 year old son, people dressed in their best clothes and people who look like they rolled just out of bed, and a babble of languages.  People watching at its best.

When the ceremony started, the new citizens are seated in the middle of the room and whoever came to support their new citizens were seated on the side.  It was all very patriotic with everyone getting a little American flag, hearing the national anthem, reciting the pledge of allegiance, and listening to audio clips about what it means to be an American and about being an immigrant, but what I thought would be a rather canned ceremony full of clichés was actually very inspiring and made me feel the most patriotic I've probably ever felt.  Watching the new citizens from the 23 different countries and different age groups and backgrounds together in one place and joining in the ceremony of US citizenship was very moving. When I looked around and saw not only their diversity, but also all the people who were there supporting their new citizen with their presence or helping them move through the ceremony, I was filled with a sense of pride that my country is what brought all these different people together.

Pollo's citizenship ceremony marked a major milestone in our lives and I'm so grateful that we were able to make it to this place and that little by little everything is  coming together.  And with that nice blue passport, travel has become a little less fraught with paperwork.  And no more visa paperwork!  For us, at least.  YAY POLLO CITIZEN!

One year on the East Coast

Pretty much one year ago Pollo and I moved to the opposite side of the country.

It's been a pretty packed year and I cannot believe that it has gone so fast. Time certainly does fly.  We sort of celebrated our one year anniversary by flying half way around the world for vacation, but thats a story for another post, if I ever get there.

This past year I have been reminded of how grateful I am for the technology that allows us to connect with friends and family from all over the place.  I was hoping that I was mostly done navigating time zones and using the internet to catch up with my friends when we moved back to California, but I guess you can never really plan where life will take you.

We have had a lot of different experiences during our first year in Pennsylvania and learned many thing about seasons and snow and the East Coast and Pennsylvania.  Here are 12 random things we've learned about living here to mark our first 12 months.

1.) Philadelphia is a really walkable city that is nice and grid like so it is easy to get around.

2.)Pennsylvania has the most waterways and lakes of any state in the continential USA. But the water doesn't taste as good as it does in Oakland.

3.)Pennsylvania drivers are really, really horrible.

4.)Spring shows up faster than you can blink.  One day everything is bare and gray and the next there are flowers and leaves everywhere!  Its beautiful.

5.)Many people call Pennsylvania Pennsyltucky, but this also means that there are lots of farms to get tasty local edibles and the countryside is amazing even in the winter.

6.)Apparently it's called "The Shore" and not "the beach" when you go to the beach.

7.)I market major holidays with appropriately shaped butter (lamb-Easter, turkey - Thanksgiving, tree-xmas)

8.)Outdoor pools are only open from Memorial Day to Labor day and heated by the summer heat.  Cold summers = miserable pools.

9.)Wegman's is the bomb

10.)The summer is really, really humid and the winter is bone dry.

11.)There are a lot of good Italian restaurants in the area.

12.)Pennsylvania has no sales tax on clothes which makes a great place to go shopping.  The outlets are only 20min away.

We're looking forward to whatever next year brings us!