McWeddings...

Whilst casually flipping through the newest edition of Everyday with Rachel Ray I found a full page ad talking about the newest HK trend. Okay, it might not have hit trend level just yet, but I was still rather astounded by the very thought, and how much my husband would find it desirable. Hard to believe, but true. You can actually book a McDonalds wedding where they even provide things like "themed invitations" and a fabulous wedding "feast." The downside, if there could possibly be one, is that the restaurants are still open to the public, so you might be sitting there in your stunning gown and suddenly find a random person sitting right next to you dripping ice cream everywhere.
I remember when I first moved to HK how strange it was when people you didn't know would join your table at a restaurant. It's the sort of thing that American's with their need for a certain kind of privacy and personal space would never dream of doing. Funny how we think we need this personal body bubble, and yet we'll post things all over facebook... anyhow, I just found the whole thing rather amusing and absurd all at the same time.
My list of jobs applied to, in case your keeping track, now includes FedEx and Safeway. I actually think the Safeway Courtesy Clerk would be a sweet gig. I could bag groceries with a smile, and whisk them out to peoples' cars so I could feel all neighborly and helpful. Anything for a paycheck.
In other news, paperwork is tedious and frustrating because they can't ever just easily tell you exactly what they want on everything. I have become the queen of making coffee (seriously Starbucks, you're missing out!). I need to do laundry and clean out the refrigerator, especially since tomorrow is garbage day. That probably means the dead bird needs to be removed from the front lawn as well. I have achieved more crock pot wonder, but still feel incompetent when it comes to all things kitchen. Walks with the kids are getting me out of bed in the morning, and Rowan's imagination continues to be fabulous.
And finally, while it was a lot of stress and planning and stress, I'm glad I got married in a normal fashion and not in McDonalds...

Paper Trails

The applications continue. I've now applied to Macy's as well. I must be a glutton for punishment. Here I am, seeking entry level jobs and then feeling lousy if I don't hear anything back from them. Mark was sweet and told me that sometimes they don't like to hire people who look overly qualified. It's a nice idea at least. But the truth is, when you can't even get a call back from Starbucks you just start to feel unemployable. Sigh. Especially when it's been over a week since I sent in the application and I see that the job is still listed, but no response here. Ah well.
My parents were back for a few days and it was nice to catch up with them and hear how things are going over in Seeley Lake where they're currently working. Sounds like it's pretty beautiful, but they're still snowed in up there. I'm thankful that the snow seems to have gone away here in Moscow. Gotta say I'm so ready for Spring. It was hard to leave it in McMinnville. Truly, I'm ready for summer. Didn't get much of it last year, and it would so be nice to have some quality sun time. I'm in desperate need of it.
I've sorted through most of the paperwork for the next visa process step. Now I just need to figure out what all we have to do again, and what they can manage to look up for themselves since we already sent it to them in the last packet. It's amazing the amount of things it seems they can't remember from one mailing to the next. Ah well. That's government for you I guess.
Not really much interesting to say. I'm still slugging along at DOP. I've managed to get through more than half of it now, and I have to say, it doesn't look too bad. I've had to revamp some things to be certain, and have tried my best to weed out repetitive vocabulary. Of course, considering the literary market I'd like to tap with it, that probably isn't the biggest concern ever...
It's always challenging to self-critique, but I wrote it long enough ago that I really don't remember everything, so I have to rediscover it as I go along.
Well, it's about one so it's probably time for me to see if I can manage to make something edible for lunch. Sadly for Mark, that isn't one of my strong points...Sigh.

Time for a change

Can I just say that living out of a suitcase...well, basically it sucks! And that's essentially what I've been doing since July. JULY! That's a long time ago. That's also how long I've been unemployed. Seriously. SERIOUSLY. I'd be lying if I said I'd been scouring the earth for a job since then. No, first I was waiting on paperwork, then I was planning a wedding, and now...now I'm just waiting to figure things out.
Tomorrow Mark and I will be heading back to Moscow, ID where we get the privilege of filing paperwork once again. Time to pay the government once again, and ask them for a little piece of paper that says it's okay for my new husband to live with me here on this continent.
Wait a minute. Husband? Oh yeah, that's right. I got married. Yes. Me. The girl who has been whining about being alone and single for something like forever. I'm now...a Wife. Changes abound, eh? And yet it's still hard for me to really define what that means. What has really changed after all? As of yet I haven't started on the paperwork that would legally change my name as well. But it's all out there, waiting for me to put it into order. I'm not just me anymore. I'm now me as a part of someone else. Let me just state right here that when someone has been on their own alone for as long as I have, it's difficult to revamp life in order to fully take on another person. But it has happened.
I'm sure I should back log. I mean, obviously quite a lot has happened since we headed to the US back in November. But I sorta don't think I'll do that. It was kind of a black hole, and it's better to move forward than to spend all my time looking back.
The wedding was crazy and amazing and ethereal and so many other things. I was there in this beautiful dress, not really looking like myself, surrounded by all these amazing people that were there just to bless me. With the exception of Marek's parents, who were blessedly able to be there even after his mom being sicker the week before they were supposed to fly than she had been in years, everyone who was there was there because of me. What a blessing. I mean for real.
Despite all the concerns I had leading up to the wedding about everything falling into place, it really did. My whole family was there, which was positively brilliant, and I was able to have all my nieces and nephews involved in the wedding in one way or another. My only regret is that there weren't more people there for Mark. I can't imagine how it must have been for him, on this day that was also important for the rest of his life, not to have a contingent of well wishers there on his behalf as well. But we can't have everything in life the way we wish it could be, so I'm thankful that things went as smoothly as they did, and that, as has been spoken soooo many times to soooo many couples, at the end of the day we were married. And the two became one...
Since that time life went through more transitions and craziness. The day after the wedding we were back with the family, making it feel even more surreal. We opened gifts, and started saying goodbyes. Then Mark and I took his parents on a trip down the Oregon Coast all the way to Crescent City. Crazy to think that only a couple weeks later it was struck by a tsunami. A reminder of just how unpredictable life can be. It was great to introduce his family to the Pacific Ocean and the Redwoods, and the Sea Lion caves. We even had the bizarre experience of seeing snow on the beach. What a wild ride for sure.
They flew back to Czech on the 27th, and we had a moment alone to breath and to start trying to figure out what this whole being married thing means. We were blessed to have a short honeymoon on the Coast by ourselves, with beautiful accommodations thanks to my parents timeshare property. This past week I've been working on catching up on almost a month of journal writing, and trying to put the house in a bit of order. We're hoping to move into my grandparents old house in a few months so we can have a chance to figure out this life on our own a little better.
In the meantime, we're heading back to Moscow to get that paperwork out of the way and to hopefully dedicate a bit of time to our passions. That is, Mark and his music and me and my writing.
Life is strange and unpredictable to be certain. What a blessing to know that I am not in control, and that no matter how complicated and busy and confusing things may look from my point of view, God is there keeping it all on track.

Safe and Sound

One day I think I was teaching my CAE class about sayings like "safe and sound." It's kind of a strange thing to try and translate. Anyhow, I just thought it would be good to inform everyone that we are now in America. We had a bit of a time getting here thanks to the blizzard that hit the Czech Republic right about the time we were leaving. The drive to the airport was rather harrowing. We left at about 11 and were in flying snow the whole way, but arrived in plenty of time to have a bite to eat and say the ever difficult goodbyes. Definitely not an easy thing to do, but we made our 5:55 AM flight with no problems.
Of course we then sat in the plane for more than an hour while the de-iced the wings. It was a pretty serious event actually. We were rather amused to watch it all, and thankful that we had a couple hours scheduled between our flights in Frankfurt.
When we got to Germany the airport looked decent. There wasn't much snow and things seemed to be moving pretty smoothly. They were a bit intense at the security check, freaking out over drinks we bought inside the Prague airport and making us chug them, as well as doing a special check in a separate room of our wireless keyboard, but we passed the inspection and got easily onto the plane. Only to sit there for more than two hours. That's right, two hours of just sitting on the tarmac waiting for them to de=ice the wings. And the pilot originally told us it would take twenty minutes. As our four hours layover in San Francisco began to dwindle I was a bit worried that we'd have a tough time making our connecting flight as well as making in through customs. Hard to hold on to the truth that God is in control, isn't it?
The flight was long. I think it's even longer when you're 6'4". They don't make it easy for tall men, and the plane we were on was kinda ghetto. We're talking seatbelts from I don't know when, and the old TVs in the middle of the aisles. The one closest to us happened to be going out and had a strange red glow around it. People wearing pink on the screen were wearing red on the functioning screen up the way. Ah well. One way or another we made it to San Francisco.
I tried to chose a decent line for Immigration, and failed. We ended up being almost the last through, even though we went there as quickly as we could. But we passed through it in really no time at all. All our papers were great and they didn't even look at us as we went through customs. In the end, we had an hour to breath and make some phone calls before heading over to catch our plane.
So after a whole lot of stress, the trip itself went as perfectly as possible. There was no running in airports, no lost luggage, and no strange questions along the way.
We were happy to meet my parents, get a little food in our bodies, and head off to bed.
There is definitely some jet lag in there, but at least we're through the process. Today we're taking it easy. We met up with my nephew Ryder for brunch at Shari's so Mark had his first big American breakfast, as well as seeing his first yellow school buses in person. It's so strange as I'm seeing all these familiar things and he's seeing EVERYTHING for the first time. It's literally like an "American" dream. The scenes from the movies are suddenly right in front of us. Rather surreal for him.
This afternoon we're hoping to see Jessie and then tomorrow we're hitting the road for Idaho.
Thanks to everyone for your prayers for safely and we'll see what the next chapter has in store for us here on this side of the world.

Chaos!

That's a pretty good title and explanation for no new blog updates for the past few weeks. It's been a roller coaster trip through paperwork and train rides, trying to tie up loose ends and prepare for the future.
I've heard stories about people who did things differently. Rumors that there is some easy way, some way that isn't so time consuming and expensive. And maybe it really does exist. But I've also heard horror stories. I've watched Green Card. I know there are things that can and do go wrong, and the potential costs and years that could be required to make them all right. Those are all things I really didn't want to have to deal with. So we went about the visa process as laid before us by the US government pages. It wasn't always easy or cost efficient, but it was legal and we did manage without the help of a lawyer, which did save us a pretty penny.
I won't bore you with the details of rushing from town to town for apostilles (a word which does exist but never wants to be accepted because it's just such a strange thing. A stamp to prove that another stamp and signature are valid. What?) and every single piece of paper required, but I'll tell you that it was a hectic back and forth sort of battle, full of nerves and stress at almost every corner. It's not like either Mark or I had ever done anything like this before, so every step along the way was something new and uncertain. For all the international traveling I've done, there has always been someone else who handled the visas. I have much more empathy for them now to be certain. When I think of all the red tape Amy had to go through to get me back to HK, I shudder and offer up a HUGE thank you!
Anyhow, the culmination of this story resulted in an interview being set. This wasn't so easy as we'd hoped either, because after being given a list of potential dates, we weren't able to reach the office by phone and our e-mails weren't answered. It seems the person responsible was on holiday and didn't think to set up an automated response so that we could breathe. In the end, Mark called at a time when we'd been informed that they wouldn't be available because they were doing interviews at that time, and we were given an interview time in the slot when we'd been told they would be free to take phone calls. Hmmm...anyone have the feeling there are some gaps in the US Embassy system? Either way, it worked, and that was what was important.
We had our appointment in the afternoon, so there was time to take the train in to Prague that day, which was nice, rather than having to stay in a hostel again. We were both quite nervous, and had come loaded with photos, e-mails, and anything else we could use to prove that our relationship was valid, as well as the beautiful engagement ring that is glowingly on my finger

Sorry for the greasy hair in this shot. Did I mention things have been hectic?
Anyhow, we turned in the official packet of stuff required and then sat to wait. We were the only ones in the room, which was nice and gave us the chance to enjoy the beautiful ceilings and try to talk about things that aren't so stressful. Then a man called us up to the counter and started telling us what things are going to be like in the future. He had us switch sides and took Mark's fingerprints, and then continued telling us how long to allot for going through immigration once we got stateside, and what they would do to process us there.
We were a bit confused. Where were the questions about toothbrush photos and distant family relatives? Or at the very least, where did we meet. I think he did say something to the effect of, "So you two want to get married right? And you know it has to be within 90 days of when you get to the US." He made some jokes about people who go through all this work and then change their mind at the end of the 90 days because really the person just wanted to travel. Let me tell you, that was a waste of their time and money. There are MUCH easier ways to get tourist visas.
Anyhow, the next thing we knew he was asking if WE had any questions. Mark asked if he wanted to see the photo album, etc, and he said, "no, you're clearly over prepared." He then went on to point out that we are obviously in a real relationship and that is what is important for this kind of visa. He said we were comfortable touching each other, and didn't jump away at the slightest arm grave having only met each other the week before. It was also clear that we could communicate in the same language, and that I wasn't old enough to be his grandmother. Images of some of the cases he must have seen come through passed across my mind. So basically that was it. Except that they had to process the finger prints and facial scan and have us pick it up on Friday.
When we left the office we were excited but still a bit confused. Could it possibly have been that easy? But Friday came, we got the visa, and the truth was in Mark's passport. It really did work out just as they had said it would.
So now we're gearing up for the big trip to America. Mark is now the owner of luggage and we've been starting the process of going through things to see what we'll take and what will stay. We're flying out on the 29th, so the time is short. We'll take another weekend trip to Germany to see his sister and family, and do all we can to work on saying good bye and preparing for whatever God has in store for us next. These are crazy times to be alive for sure!

Today is Tuesday

Just thought I'd state the obvious. Every now and then that's a good thing to say it like it is, right?
It's been a bit of a crazy few days. An early morning internet search, we're talking 4 AM, led to new discoveries about visas. That, naturally, spiraled rapidly into a first class freak out. It's been a while since I've felt so utterly devastated. Especially by my own stupidity. I felt as though I'd somehow failed everyone completely. The time scale I'd been counting on flew out the window, and new questions about whether we'd done things correctly or would have to start again at the beginning flooded my mind.
What a difference a few days can make. After countless freaked out messages with my mom, as well as a few e-mails to the US Embassy here in Prague, and a whole lot more time spent searching on the internet, I received news today that we have passed the first part of the process, and we are still okay. The information I was so afraid was late is actually something we aren't supposed to do for a little while yet. What a relief.
It's been interesting to look back at my entire freak out and see how little faith I really have. Throughout the process I have been praying that things would go well. I've been trying to do the right thing, and I've been trying to trust, but this moment showed me that I really hadn't been doing that as much as I'd wanted to believe.
In truth, I'm sure it was God who woke me up to the new set of facts, and it was me who overreacted. At least now that we know what is to be expected in the future we can prepare for it as much as possible now, and be ready when the time does come.
And now I can see how God really was working in each part so carefully, leading us into the right direction. How quick I was to think that my own humanity was enough to upset the plans of God. How quick to doubt that He was caring for me, more than I could even care for myself.
The process is not yet complete, and I'm still not certain how long it will all take, but with this newest information I know that the time is coming when all these things will be figured out and I can enter into the next stage of my life.
There are still so many uncertainties about heading back to the US. Obviously the job search is already in my mind, but not knowing exactly when I'll be heading back I must, once again, just learn to live more in the moment, and accept this time that God has given me to meditate more on life and my relationship with Him and with Mark.
It is so true that "Those that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength." If only I could hold that thought in mind more easily, as well as the truth that worrying will never add anything positive to my life, and only make every day that much more stressful.

Of Visas, Prophets and Forecasting Lies...

No, I haven't jut been listening to too much Pedro the Lion. But his song, referenced above in my title (of minor prophets and prostitute wives - for those not in the know) is truly one of my favorites. It's a song all about love and redemption on oh so many levels. It was actually the opening page of a journal of mine once, way back in the day. The story of how we so often don't see the value of God in our lives. But in the end, despite all the horrible things we do, He's still right there, calling us back home into His arms of forgiveness. Definitely a song well worth listening to and pondering. But far from my topic really...well, except for the fact that I always need a reminder that God is the One who truly loves me, who loves us all...
Anyhow, I'm deep in the process of visa paperwork. For all of those who have processed visas for me in the past, I thank you. When I think of all the work Amy (Stephens) Strachan had to do in order to get me back to Hong Kong, I'm truly in awe of her tenacity. And whatever magic had to be worked to get me into Czech with an on time Visa, knowing how often teacher visas are late here, is still greatly appreciated. Now that it's my turn to go through it all, I just have to go back to the fact that God is the One in control. As always, it is only through His grace that I can even stand, let alone hope that everything is going to process smoothly. I know it's all important, and obviously there need to be rules and restrictions on people traveling back and forth between countries, but I really pray that they'll see how in love we are and that everything is just go fast fast FAST.
As far as prophets go, I've just started listening to a new 180 series about the prophet Daniel. It really is amazing to be able to stay connected to what is going on in Hong Kong, and I'm already intrigued to see what all we will be learning through this series.
And last, and definitely the most depressing, is the weather. Well, I suppose I can't say that the forecasters have been lying. In truth, they spoke the truth. They said rain, and here it is. I guess the lie was more the beauty of the past week that made me think Spring could possibly be here to stay. Instead I'm stuck inside on a gloomy Monday. Perhaps it was for the best, because I had to work on the Visa stuff, but still, I miss the sunny stuff. I never was much of one for "liquid" sunshine. Ah well.
In other news, Julie will be here in less than two weeks! I'm super excited that she is able to come, and can't wait to help her experience Europe :) It's been nearly 20 years since she was here with her high school groups, so I know she's pretty pumped as well. Still working on itinerary plans, but it should be great all the same :)