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!

Buying a New Car

There they are!   A nice little Toyota family

We know that when Pollo took this job that he would be driving a lot for work and if we didn't get another car I would be stuck at home, or completely dependent on him taking me places and then picking me back up in the afternoon.  Not a lot of independence.  I looked at the bus option, and found that to get anywhere of importance you have to take the bus to the central station and then transfer from there.  (I will do this one day to see what is it like...) So, we decided to get a second car that would be good not only as a second set of wheels, but also as a safer set of wheels for the crazy East Coast weather.   Once we got more or less settled in our new place we put our heads together and started our research for getting a second car, which ended up being a NEW one.

Pollo and I are now the second people in on my side of the family to buy a new car. My brother and his wife bought a new car a few years ago, but our parents do not buy any new cars (or TVs, yet).  All the cars that I have had and that have been in the garage at home have been used.  Excellent used cars at that, but for our second car here in Pennsylvania we didn't find what we were looking for in a used car. We were looking for an AWD with low mileage, probably a CR-V or a Rav4 because of the space, the reliability, and the fact that it sits up higher than a sedan, but doesn't guzzle gas.  We found that right now, buying a used car with low mileage is either more than a new car or not significantly less so we decided to look at the new car options where you get all the original warranties and get pretty much exactly what you want and you don't have to worry about how the original owner kept the car.

For help with buying a new car I turned to the Motley Fool's Guide to Buying a New Car.  The article is really long and I'm not always a fan of their writing style, but their advice is good and gives you lots of good pointers and tricks for not being taken in by a dealership.   Another good resource for a car buying guide is with the Consumer Reports New Car Buying Guide or the Consumer Reports Car Buying Advice article. All of these articles are really long, but they go along with the most important advice which is to do your homework.  Cars are not really good investments as new cars depreciate in value as soon as they leave the lot and then lose the highest percentage of their value in their first three years in your home, but it is a a major investment which shouldn't be taken lightly.  So read the articles and do the research.

For car research I used Consumer Reports to check out how the 2014 models were ranked and rated against previous models and to find out minor flaws and improvements to each new model.  Consumer Reports works best for checking out reliability and safety and handling of each car, but their rankings and reviews are limited to paying subscribers.   If you want to break things down even more and compare the specs of different cars and a lot of little details like width of the car and how much mileage it is supposed to give you then the best website I found was to use Edmonds.com car comparison page. When you plug in the make and model of the car it gives you somewhere around 4 pages of comparisons which were really helpful for us because we were basically comparing the same car from different companies.  It even gives you an idea of what consumers think of each car.  This helped organize the car information that I was collecting along the way.  Edmonds also has articles and other pieces of helpful information that I didn't look at.

Once we completed our research we got to contacting dealerships about our interest.  Here comes Consumer Reports again, but they have this thing where you can say what you are interested in buying and the dealers will call you to get the ball rolling.  This is handy because you get a direct contact of a person you can talk to, but it means that you might get more contacts than you really need.  Another way to start the ball rolling is to use the Costco Auto Program, which you also need to be a Costco Member to take advantage of, but Costco is pretty amazing in general so I would suggest a membership even if you don't want to buy a car.  We found that going through the Costco Auto Program actually gave us the best price out there.  We were told that Costco really wants to make sure that their members get the best price on the market so you can actually push them lower than you can another dealer. We were offered a price that was significantly lower than any other dealership was willing even willing to entertain.   We closed with a good deal, but then had to deal with talking to the financing guy who also tries to sell you other things for your car.  Like extended warranty and fancy protections and stuff.  we added a few extras that we deemed worthy, but didn't add too many things.

Another aspect of getting a new car that I never thought about is the ability to choose what color your car is.  When you get used you don't really care about the color, but more about how the car runs.   With our new Rav4 we chose the outside color and the inside color and then they had to go out and get it for us!  It was pretty cool.  Once we finished our paperwork (and we got Pennsylvania licenses) our car arrived the very next week and I went to go pick it up!  Pollo was on a business trip so the dealership picked me up and  I drove it home all by myself without anything happening to it, or me.  It was a lot of work trying to figure out the car thing, but I'm glad we were thorough.

In the month of dealing with cars, buying the car was actually the least frustrating event...more on our other car adventures next post.

The Return of Pollito and Reina

Pollito and Reina are back online to recount new adventures!

It has been quite a while since the last posting...about 2 years perhaps?  I stopped blogging because our adventures in the US didn't seem quite so exciting as the adventures we had abroad, but maybe I just got lazy.

Since Pollito arrived in the US, life has been a long roller coaster of emotions and events that has finally led us to where we are now : Pennsylvania.

To recap ever so quickly:
-Everyone is excited and anxious and Pollo arrived in the US at the end of Sept. 2012.
-We were shocked when his Green Card arrived in October.  We thanked our lucky stars we filed for the visa the way we did.
-We were hopeful that a program called Upwardly Global would help him a little more with getting his foot in the door job wise and although he learned some things about jobs in the US, nothing from the program really panned out.
-After some stress and lots of planning, we had our church wedding and reception on our first anniversary in Oakland surrounded by friends and family from all over.
-Pollo took lots of English classes with Berlitz Languages that helped him with confidence and greatly improved his English.
-Over the course of 18 months, Pollo applied to dozens of jobs and made it to the last round of three different interviews, but to no avail.  It was frustrating trying to figure out what was keeping him from getting an offer.
-Finally, after a trip to Peru in February of 2014, Pollo went through one final job interview process...AND GOT THE JOB!  The position is an Account Manager Position with a major telecom company.  The only downside is that the job is in Pennsylvania far away from the warm California sun and all the friends and family on the Best (sorry, west) Coast.
-Almost two years to the day that I moved back to the US, we took a leap of faith and moved cross country to the East Coast.

Our next adventures will chronicle our sudden move across country, the assumption of many truly adult responsibilities, and our East Coast endeavors.

Almost at the Finish Line!

http://www.anekant.org/picts/op2_tortoise_at_finish_line.jpg

Pollito received his special Spanish paper this week!!! And then he went and got his police record from Peru, and then he called the Embassy....AND...

He is waiting for the official interview date package to arrive!!  HURRAYYY!!!  We are ALMOST there.

We did it!

Ta-da!!

All last week was really busy, not just because we got married :), but also because my entire family was in town!  It was a crazy, fun filled, stressful week.

The actual ceremony day got off to a rocky start from the night before.  Pollito's suit should have been ready at least on Monday to have the final fitting and stuff.  Unfortunately it wasn't ready until Wednesday afternoon and when he went to go pick it up it they had finished the wrong suit and it wasn't ready.  They asked him to come back the following day...Thursday, ie. wedding day.  Then they said he should return in two hours so that they could finish it.  We were both hoping that everything was perfect, but even if it wasn't Pollito would still have to wear it. In the end it was ok, and the suit turned out great, but it was what turned out to be the first of a few wedding scares.

The morning of, I had arranged to go with my sister-in-law and mom to the hair salon really early in the morning for hair and make up.  It started off great and I had high hope that they would work fast and we would be out in an hour.  After all the hair I had ordered was not too complex and I had really natural make-up in mind as well.  I think that I told the woman like 5 times that we had to be finished at a certain time.  By the time we got out we just had time to throw our dresses on, grab jewelry and run out the door.

Another thing that was a little scary was that the flowers that I had ordered a week before WERE NOT READY.  I have even called them to confirm that they would be ready the day before.  However, with the lagging of the salon, they flowers actually arrived before we finished hair and makeup.  Sighs of relief.

The morning was so hot that I was sweating before we even go to the city hall in the park.  Pollito kept dabbing his face with his handkerchief and everyone looked a little limp.

When we arrived at the park/city hall (the marriage department is located in a government building in a huge park) we met our photographer, who was an old teacher's aid that Pollito had in university.  We then gathered everyone together and went inside the building.

The officiant seemed to be a little flustered and the room was sweltering.  We opened the window and turned on the air while the officiant moved in and out of the room looking for what we thought was a...pencil?  Whatever it was he found it...and he motioned for us to start the ceremony.  I walked in with my dad, which is something that I hadn't planned ahead of time, but was really glad I did.

The officiant then proceeded to read laws and the meaning of marriage and the different sections of marriage law.  I felt bad for my family because they couldn't understand anything.  We we have the religious ceremony we will have to work something out...we reminded the guy that we were going to exchange rings and he was just like...yea...yea.  And carried on.  Then he brought out more little prompt cards and asked if we had the rings.  My nephew dutifully came up with the gigantic ring box and we read off the cards.  Then the officiant read us some passages from the bible and from some Hindu readings and I must say that I agree more with the Hindu readings about being together, separate.

Then it was over and we were married!!! Hurray!!  Pollito and Reina forever and ever.

We had a nice toast with my beloved petit fours that my mom brought all the way down from the US and Champagne and sparkling juice.  And then we retired for photos around the park and lunch at the Costa Verde Restaurant basically on the beach with nice sea breezes and views of the coast.

A little bit of the view.

Everyone gorged themselves, in a polite manner, on the great food that this restaurant has.  They claim the Guinness World Record for most types of dishes on a Buffet..who knew such an award existed?

We finished the day taking pictures in the "Fiance Bay", a cute little hokey park by Pollito's mom's house where they have a chair that is made like a conjoined throne and if you sit on it you can see a crown rising up from behind you.  During the night on weekends it is teeming with brides taking pictures.  Pollito said he would die before he went to take pictures there, that it is super "huachafa" (corny and sappy), but since its my wedding too, we went and took some pictures....the crown one is til on its way

Mareweed!!