The hubby and I are now legal residents of the United States of America. It's important to point out that we're legal residents both because it's true, and if it wasn't and I was blogging about it I'd be, well, stupid.
We immigrated last Monday and we were pleasantly surprised by how pain-free our experience was. It may have helped that MIT's International Scholars Office prepared all our forms for us, but all we did was show up at the Queenston-Lewiston boarder crossing, tell boarder guard we were moving, then he sent us into the customs office. The officer there filled out the remaining necessary forms, stapled our visas to our passports and twenty minutes later we were on our way. We had to give up our finger prints (not you know, literally, but they were scanned and put into some federal database), which I wasn't so fond of, but there isn't anything we can do about that, except turn around and go back to Canada.
We arrived at our new place in Somerrville (one of the many cities that makes up the greater Boston area) around 7:00 pm. Thankfully we had the good sense to pack our camping cookware as our furniture couldn't leave Edmonton until we have our official visa documents. The truck with our possession is currently somewhere in Pennsylvania and we should have everything later this week--I can't wait to have a proper bed, desk, and dining table again.
Over the last week we've been running around, trying to get as many of the necessary bits of life taken care of: restocking our groceries, getting new SIM cards and setting up Internet. We've organized car and renter's insurance, although we still need to complete registering our vehicle (for which we needed insurance first). We've also got a new place to train for aerials, at Esh Aerial Arts. We went to the studio on Tuesday to be assessed for our skill level (different places teach things at different levels), and we've been to our first open studio practice this past Sunday. I've even found an awesome place to get knitting supplies at Gather Here.
For the time being I'm working remotely for my previous/current (whatever) employer at the University of Alberta, but I am looking for local jobs. The great thing about being a librarian is that I qualify for a TN visa, if I find a library job, for anything else I'll need to apply for (and hope I get) a work permit.
That's about it for now, just quick update to say I'm still here, and I'll hopefully be back on the blogging train now that I'm not in the process of preparing for a move. Likewise I'll hopefully be back on the writing train soon too.
Ciao,
Andrea
