A week in Detroit, now back in Chicago. Nexg week Canada...
My month's Visa for the US is up in a week and after that it'll be all school prep and getting everything ready, but it's been a bit of a journey for the last month.
It started with Eric coming up for school with me but not having any visa in hand. He was rejected at the boarder for not having anything in hand and turned away with the last words that if he tried to get back into Canada without a Visa he would be barred from the country. He then got the idea that I should go into the states with him for a month while we figure things out for getting him back into Canada for school, so I took the midnight tunnel bus to Detroit and got into the states, not easily mind you, they were suspicious that I was never coming back, because I had too little on me for a month's trip. I got in, but just by the skin of my teeth.
After a sleep and a six hour drive we were in Chicago and had begun to pull our weight to figure out what to do for Eric. Spending at least a day on research as to what we could do, and how we could do it. He couldn't apply at the University because they don't offer open programs, but at St. Clair they did have open programs to get into, so he applied for the Early Childhood Education program at St.Clair and got accepted rather quickly, it was a lot of legwork getting that done, took about half the month. Getting grades sent, money, all of that. We had very little downtime.
The second part of the legwork was getting the Student Visa, which was much harder to obtain. First we tried to get it by faxing the application, but that hailed no response, there was no way to talk to anybody at the consulate and nobody in the Chicago consulate wanted to talk to Eric. The school had little to offer for help and going to the boarder with the paperwork seemed ridiculous as Eric was told if he tried to come back he'd be barred just trying to enter without the Visa already in hand. So we packed for a night in Detroit and left for another 6 hour drive, the drive itself was rather eventless but travel is brutal on me.
Upon our arrival in Detriot we slept and prepared for the consulate, we had a signed affidavit from his father for financial support, records of financial stability and dependence, grades and other standard paperwork. When we got to the consulate it was a bit of a wait for me, Eric went upstairs and was gone for about an hour, came back down and was told he'd have an interview in an hour. After going back up and coming back down he told me that he was rejected and we went back to our hotel to stew on the matter. The checkbox said that they didn't think he'd return home, so we did the best we could to come up with letters from friends, co workers, bosses, everything, his father pulled a lot of legwork and a lot of support. But we went back to the consulate the next day while waiting on more paperwork to find out more about what was checked off, as it mentioned more than one thing. All they said to him was "We know about the girlfriend" and he was sent back down.
After that we visited a lawyer in Detroit who gave us advice and we each prepared an affidavit to state our intent to goto school, basically saying we don't currently claim any status or common-law, but were careful to not saying that we don't intend to marry, because the future could be anything.
It wasn't until yesterday that we went to the consulate again this time with a mountain of paperwork more than 30 pages thick, very legal, very verbose and with 1 border rejection and 1 visa rejection in hand. Eric came back downstairs rather quickly to tell me they told him to goto the boarder because they simply didn't have time to reject him themselves again. So Eric wanted us to goto the boarder, but due to my trouble getting in last time I did not want t join him in tht venture. So I stayed at the consulate and Eric went to boarder on his own. It was probably the most anxious 2 hours of my life, sitting in the entrance-way of a large building with only my DSiXL in hand. Eric came back with a look of panic on his face, but only had good news, he had been accepted for the first year of school and to reapply for year two. Happiness, joy and a lot of weight off of our shoulders.
We drove back yesterday and I'm now back in Chicago.
The story is actually more flavourful than that though. We spent most of our downtime exploring Detroit a bit, we went to a video game collectors store only to find that the guy was behind glass, searching for video games is most of what we did in our waiting time for paperwork to come through, we explored various restaurants and the like. Eric tried mead for the first time and loved it. We came back with 2 more seasons of Spongebob, a ton of games and a few laserdiscs. I'm pretty excited about some of my finds.
Our downtime in Chicago was spend trying to get me clothes (since I came with so few) and boots. But we still managed to get some video games and items I've been on the search for ( I now own Final Fantasy V complete for the SFC). We also went to a Ren faire, which was a lot of fun, Eric bought me a few interesting peices of clothing there and I bought the most comfortable sandals known to man. It was a lot of fun.
So while the whole experience has been a little tough, we've tried to spend as much of it trying to relax together at the same time. Next week we head to the apartment to prepare for school. I'm very excited and quite relieved. I'll probably add a little more to the post later, as believe it or not, this is a very barebones post...
It started with Eric coming up for school with me but not having any visa in hand. He was rejected at the boarder for not having anything in hand and turned away with the last words that if he tried to get back into Canada without a Visa he would be barred from the country. He then got the idea that I should go into the states with him for a month while we figure things out for getting him back into Canada for school, so I took the midnight tunnel bus to Detroit and got into the states, not easily mind you, they were suspicious that I was never coming back, because I had too little on me for a month's trip. I got in, but just by the skin of my teeth.
After a sleep and a six hour drive we were in Chicago and had begun to pull our weight to figure out what to do for Eric. Spending at least a day on research as to what we could do, and how we could do it. He couldn't apply at the University because they don't offer open programs, but at St. Clair they did have open programs to get into, so he applied for the Early Childhood Education program at St.Clair and got accepted rather quickly, it was a lot of legwork getting that done, took about half the month. Getting grades sent, money, all of that. We had very little downtime.
The second part of the legwork was getting the Student Visa, which was much harder to obtain. First we tried to get it by faxing the application, but that hailed no response, there was no way to talk to anybody at the consulate and nobody in the Chicago consulate wanted to talk to Eric. The school had little to offer for help and going to the boarder with the paperwork seemed ridiculous as Eric was told if he tried to come back he'd be barred just trying to enter without the Visa already in hand. So we packed for a night in Detroit and left for another 6 hour drive, the drive itself was rather eventless but travel is brutal on me.
Upon our arrival in Detriot we slept and prepared for the consulate, we had a signed affidavit from his father for financial support, records of financial stability and dependence, grades and other standard paperwork. When we got to the consulate it was a bit of a wait for me, Eric went upstairs and was gone for about an hour, came back down and was told he'd have an interview in an hour. After going back up and coming back down he told me that he was rejected and we went back to our hotel to stew on the matter. The checkbox said that they didn't think he'd return home, so we did the best we could to come up with letters from friends, co workers, bosses, everything, his father pulled a lot of legwork and a lot of support. But we went back to the consulate the next day while waiting on more paperwork to find out more about what was checked off, as it mentioned more than one thing. All they said to him was "We know about the girlfriend" and he was sent back down.
After that we visited a lawyer in Detroit who gave us advice and we each prepared an affidavit to state our intent to goto school, basically saying we don't currently claim any status or common-law, but were careful to not saying that we don't intend to marry, because the future could be anything.
It wasn't until yesterday that we went to the consulate again this time with a mountain of paperwork more than 30 pages thick, very legal, very verbose and with 1 border rejection and 1 visa rejection in hand. Eric came back downstairs rather quickly to tell me they told him to goto the boarder because they simply didn't have time to reject him themselves again. So Eric wanted us to goto the boarder, but due to my trouble getting in last time I did not want t join him in tht venture. So I stayed at the consulate and Eric went to boarder on his own. It was probably the most anxious 2 hours of my life, sitting in the entrance-way of a large building with only my DSiXL in hand. Eric came back with a look of panic on his face, but only had good news, he had been accepted for the first year of school and to reapply for year two. Happiness, joy and a lot of weight off of our shoulders.
We drove back yesterday and I'm now back in Chicago.
The story is actually more flavourful than that though. We spent most of our downtime exploring Detroit a bit, we went to a video game collectors store only to find that the guy was behind glass, searching for video games is most of what we did in our waiting time for paperwork to come through, we explored various restaurants and the like. Eric tried mead for the first time and loved it. We came back with 2 more seasons of Spongebob, a ton of games and a few laserdiscs. I'm pretty excited about some of my finds.
Our downtime in Chicago was spend trying to get me clothes (since I came with so few) and boots. But we still managed to get some video games and items I've been on the search for ( I now own Final Fantasy V complete for the SFC). We also went to a Ren faire, which was a lot of fun, Eric bought me a few interesting peices of clothing there and I bought the most comfortable sandals known to man. It was a lot of fun.
So while the whole experience has been a little tough, we've tried to spend as much of it trying to relax together at the same time. Next week we head to the apartment to prepare for school. I'm very excited and quite relieved. I'll probably add a little more to the post later, as believe it or not, this is a very barebones post...