Today last year I arrived here don’t know what to expect. It was still cool Fall weather when I arrived. Two weeks later, we rushed to the store to get me some thermal wears! It was a lengthy and bitter winter, everyone assured me it’s not typical.
T got me hooked up with the International Cafe, I met many new people and getting to know some friends. Many people asked me what do I do with my free time since I am not employed here. Well, I am actually fairly busy in the last year. First, though I don’t work outside of home, I do work online at home a bit. Since I discovered the big wild world of coupon shopping two months after I arrived here and that has kept me pretty busy, especially when we started selling the stockpile at yard sales and flea markets .
Besides, have been donating tons of the dairy products and perishables that I got for free to the food pantry and shelter. Before I got my driver license, T helped me to drop off more than 200 bags of cheese and a few hundreds cans of refrigerated dough(to make biscuit, crescent roll and dinner rolls) at the women shelter.
I also join the area woman center and volunteer there. I do the layout and typeset for the bi-monthly newsletters. Actually, they invited me to be part of the Board of Directors, but I wasn’t sure I have time for greater commitment, so I didn’t go for the meeting last month.
We have gone to the flea market a couple of times and were doing extremely well. We started our tables at about 6 -7 a.m, by9.30 t0 10 a.m., we were SOLD OUT. If we are able to go there twice a month, it’s better than me working part time! What would you do? Slave at a minimum wage job and let Uncle Sam takes 1/4 of your pay, or have the stores pay you to shop?
I may eventually go back to school to get a teacher certification, so I can tutor math part time or teach full time in a public school. I would love to go for a Montessori certification, but there is no authentic Montessori school at this small town where we live. However, during my initial inquiry at the university near us, was told I first have to send all my certs and transcripts to an agency for evaluations. I am yet to dig out all the certs and transcripts to do that!
All in all, I am thankful to God for all the people that He put in my path during this whole year, it has turned out to be nothing I would have anticipated, but a detour that has wonderful scenery anyway!
Four days after receiving the Welcome to America notice and 45 days after entering the country with a n IR1 spousal visa, the green card came in the mail today! ( I don’t know why it’s called green card when it’s not green in color! )
They did mess up my name as they did in the Welcome Notice, so we would have to send it back for correction. What fun we have with the immigration services !!
Still no news from the Social Security office. We may make another trip down there next Tuesday ( T ’s day off from work) if we do not receive anything in the mail by next Monday.
Six weeks after arriving here, the much anticipated welcome notice from US Citizenship and Immigration Services finally came in the mail today.
The notice says I should hear from them again within 30 days. Guess that means I will receive the green card in the mail within 30 days. However, they jumbled up my name AGAIN! I called to inform about that. The customer service person told me the card production has been ordered and there is nothing she could do to fix that. She suggested I send back the green card for amendment when it arrives.
We may have to make an Infopass appointment to get that fixed. It’s amazing that a government department that deals with so many immigrants assumed everyone else has the same first-middle-last names sequence.
Today is the presidential election day and T’s day off from work. He voted early so we could go down to the nearest social security office to inquire on the status of my Social Security Numbers (SSN) and Social Security Card. The car park at polling station was full even though it’s 6.30 a.m. Either because many people were exercising their rights before they started work or they thought it would be less people early in the morning!
The nearest local Social Security office took about two hours to and fro, we would prefer to find out the status through phone if someone would pick up the darn phone at the Social Security office.
We drove down there, waited 30 minutes in line, was told the woman who processed our application was on leave and we would not get any information other than the Immigration Services had validated my data. Though the woman who talked to us was all polite, you know she didn’t care and would not go an inch further. She could have go ahead to assign the SSN or corrected the mistake in my name, but she choose to do nothing. The Social Security office at this location sucks, the people work there are worst than Malaysian government servants.
