Living in America 2011

[MmeBucket]

We were a few messages away from being closed on the other one. Hope everyone finds me here.

hi, I'm here, sort of.

been busy - 2 jobs is not such fun, but it's only 2 week til the teaching ends, then i'm pt in sep, so i need the 2nd job.

have just read thread. we are drowning here (well, not us, we're up a slope), but near us 2,000 cubic yards of earth slid onto the road & railroad due to all the rain!!! it's taking days to clear.

just got in from seeing the arctic monkeys playing in detroit. twas fab. i just worked out i've only ever seen 1 american band play in the US, all the other acts i've been to have been british/irish.

you'd think, living near mo'town/m&m, i'd get into local music more.

Rain sounds scary, kickass. Dont work too hard.

When I lived in Chicago. I saw U2 and Oasis then realized I should probably go to a Blues club or something. I only went once BUT they do free concerts every year and I saw BB King at the Blues Festival.

I'll be the BB King concert was good. I was able to go to the King Biscuit Blues Festival many, many years ago. I'm not a huge blues fan but it was fun.

Tadjenny thanks for your offer, will definitely love to meet up! I absolutely adore German, studied it for for two years privately and even went on a trip to Tuebingen as part of my studies, but alas, had to let it go. Still thinking about doing a degree or something, maybe join the DAAD in San Jose (if things like that exist in USA, haven't even checked yet. Sorry to hear about green card rejection, must be a bummer.

Also my sympathies with all the bad news - rain, employees, sisters.

We're off to London on Thursday for our visa interviews, the mountain of paperwork that we have to take is ready, and I'm a teeny bit excited. But not too much, yet. I keep looking out the window at the horrible Scottish rain and wind and think that one day soon it will be endless sunshine.
I presume you've all had to built up a credit record over there? Bloody hell, why can't this at least be more straightforward!!? And we're going to have to buy a dirt cheap car with cash for the first few months, until said credit record comes through.

Another questions; how did your dc's adapt to the time change? We're worried that we won't be sleeping for the first month...

Cheers!

dd adapted to time change quicker than we did.

credit rating - no, it doesn't transfer & lots of things like credit card etc want you to have a 2 year credit history before they accept you. some car retailers have 'executive lease plans' specifically for peopl who have moved countries - audi do, we were offered one, so worth asking about. also, you can get a credit score run here before you leave, then take that with you. it was what we did to get a mortgage, but had to sign a load of stuff to do it from the US as there's all sorts of restrictions on running them from abroad.

Jenny - did you get rejected for green card? sorry missed that. Where does that leave you now with future plans?

Thanks for the regards and thoughts. Back in NJ (home!). peppa pig world was fab and no had not heard mention of the adders.
Kickass are you near the tornado (Joplin?) or are these the missisippi floods? It's really hard to keep up with the weather things going on at the mo but now I am connected to a computer again it will make it easier! Shame the Crackberry is playing up!
mdavza we found employers references really helped with credit in some cases (if your employer will do that!). When car shopping Toyota tried to rip us off but we found a really good deal with Suburu. We've only been here a year and we've already got a good score, we do pay everything off straight away though.
Tadjenny will read back through because I think I missed something.

we're in SE michigan. the mid-west has had phenomenal rainfall, e.g. 9 inches last week alone. this is tornado season as well, we haven't had any go through here but are on tornado warning/watch quite often.
tornado drills at school are not fun - we all have to go & stand in the boys' bathroom.
the thunderstorms are pretty impressive, but no-one has ever known this much rain - usually we're onto nearly 100% sunshine by now, pic-nics & bbqs galore.

Hi all, on holiday in San Diego (which is lush!) so just a quick update. The green card rejection was just a soft one which they said was because of an incorrect cheque amount. That wasn't actually true, so I'm not sure what the problem was. Dh's work have taken absolutely ages to reissue the cheques because of the sarbaines-oxley (sp?) regs so not sure whether the lawyer has reapplied. Apparently we keep at the same spot in the process but I'm not sure if they can reject me and the dcs and keep dh, can they? His biometric appointment is next week and of course the youngest dc was born here. We'll see, anyway.

Glad no-one has been too affected by the weather. It's lovely and sunny down here and apparently hailing back home in Oregon!

Good luck with your Embassy appointment mdavza! It can take ages and I hope it doesn't rain on you in the queue!

We've had way too much hail this year! Luckily, the really bad one at home happened when I was at work so only one car to get fixed instead of two. funny how different it can be just across town.

jabberwocky that sounds like extreme hail!
Tadjennyp-Blooming auditors! I don't know about issuing your husband a green card and not yourselves. Hope it gets sorted soon.

Hi all. It has been insanely busy here. I can't imagine baseball season when they're on different teams.

Tad, there have been stupid amounts of hail here. I've had days where I went outside after it stopped and thrown armfuls of it at the windows to amuse the kids.

Yep, ds1 and I had quite the conversation last night. He is getting concerned about global warming and wants to write a letter to our senator, bless him. The crazy weather lately does make one wonder what's in the future.

We've had barely any rain for months. Everything is dry and my veg aren't growing. I think it's set to be a wet week and I shall (for once!) be glad. Thank goodness we've not had all that hail though.

Hope your veg is getting a good watering grockle. Dh still hasn't planted his out yet as it is too cold overnight still. Bring on the summer! Dh has his green card biometric appointment on Friday which makes me feel a bit as the lawyer has only just resubmitted mine and the dcs application. Fingers crossed we're not rejected this time.

Good luck tomorrow, tad

Hi all,
Havent dropped in..in a while.
Hope everyone is safe after those tornadoes. Here in NM its dry and hot, rain is a once or twice occurrence here since we arrived last year.

The inlaws are visiting us at the moment and its great having a fully stocked up supply of cheese n onion crisps and cadburys choc...and biccys and its also nice to have family here too of course
Off to the grand canyon in the morning with them. Its quite hot at the moment and hazy here with all the smoke blowing in from the massive forest fire in AZ. So im hoping we actually get to see the canyon!

DH is being moved to another city later in the year, just to AZ so not too far away we'll just pack up our rental car with the dc's most important items and drive ourselves and then ship the rest. Hoping the move wont be quite as much of an upheavel. But its hard on the dc's.

I'm trying to help youngest ds by talking about it often and letting him know I wont throw him into the deep end in yet another new school(He starts kindergarten this August)

good luck to all with visa/green card apps..the paperwork would drive you spare at times. And hope everyone has a nice summer. Counting down the weeks now until our California Vaca

Hi all!
well, our visa application went swimmingly, no standing in the que, no funny questions, it went sooo quickly, and we received our visas three days afterwards. It was actually nice to finally have the passports with visas in them, and getting more excited.
We're going to rent an apartment from over here, otherwise loads of issues with the move (you need a residential address over there for the custom forms), so how did you do it?

Good luck with the move, MrsDmamee.
And hope your application went ok, tadjenny

mdavza- we had a realtor help us look for rentals but she was a bit useless really! In the end we rented an Avalon apartment for which we paid the deposit and started leasing two-three weeks before we needed it (they give an unflexible start date). We also found getting lease periods for below a year pretty impossible but in hindsight it was good to be tied into one place for a year as it helped us get settled quicker.
Good luck!

congrats on the visas mdavza! We shared a container with two other families and they already had rentals sorted out. Dh went over 6 weeks ahead of us to get a house ready. His biometric appointment went really well, still have no clue as to if and when me and the older two dcs will get one. Feeling a bit philosophical about the whole thing as it is completely out of my hands.

Good luck with the moves mdavza and MrsDmamee!

Hi All

mdazza I think we only had residential address for when the crate arrived at US customs? When it left UK we hadn't got address yet. Think we told shipping company while it was in transit? (if I remember correctly?). It took 6 -7 weeks (via Long beach) although we were told to expect 8 as they can get stuck in customs.

All schools finished for summer.... 10 weeks off...arh! Going back to the UK for a month (next week) so am now getting VERY excited

Have a fab time in the UK flipflops! Eat some cheese and onion crisps for me!

And a sausage roll and fish and chips and and ...actually better not or you will come back like me with an extra 5lbs and not in the suitcases!

Not a dreaded Greggs sausage roll Frida?

Am looking forward to going shopping in Sainsburys..... my DS is really looking forward to a Greggs sausage roll

Any kind as long as it's warm and slightly greasy!