Monday marked 2 weeks until we fly out. I feel alternately completely on top of this time line, and completely swamped by it. Sometimes these changes are marked by minutes.
This last week has been really, really busy in terms of getting us into the air.
On Thursday we went to the US Consulate to get our Visas. This was an extremely nerve wracking experience for me. We had heard numerous reports that it was a really stressful, drawn out event and Avalara had sent us close to a ream of paper (maybe
slightly exaggerated, but not by much!) that carefully detailed all the information we would need, including instructions on what not to say. Mostly they were "Don't say you plan to stay longer than two years, or that you want citizenship." Out the door went my carefully crafted jokes about anchor babies (no, I would never, even before the mountain of paper was FedExed to us). I'm actually not sure why this is important, as the E3 is basically infinitely renewable, and you can opt for a green card after 2 years. It didn't matter as neither of these things is true for us anyway, so there was no chance of us saying them, but it seemed to be the most important aspect of the teetering pile of information.
To minimise the stress, we elected to leave the children with Grandma and Mum for the day, as they, by happy coincidence, were staying a few nights. Armed with every identifying document we've ever owned, the ream of paper and sweaty palms, we boarded a train at 6:30am. Our interview wasn't until 10:00am, but we wanted to have the option of having breakfast in a cafe as it was our 4 year wedding anniversary. This was literally the only way we marked it. We chose the Guylian Cafe on the harbour and it was fabulous! So glad we took the extra time to do this.
We arrived at the Consulate at 9:05am, nervous and having been told the wait could be hours. It turns out the consulate doesn't open until 9:15 and that you can't line up more than 15 minutes before your designated interview time.
So we sat back down and lined up dutifully at 9:45. After passing the two police men wearing bullet proof vests, of course. There were lots of rules, including that we had to leave our bags, and any objects, like pens, behind. We also went through airport like security. Despite the fact people around us were being told off about "smuggled" pens, and hands glued to phones, and the one guy who brought his computer because he had no printer and thought this was the best way to present his paperwork, no one raised an eyebrow at us. Probably because the only thing in my bag was 12 forgotten lollipop sticks and 9 slightly damp Coles receipts. And the only thing in Bob's was our ream of paper.
After a group of girls that looked like they belonged in a classroom and not a consulate checked over our paperwork, we were ushered into an elevator and zoomed up forty floors.
Here was a room that was cross between the RTA and a bank, with much, much thicker glass in front of the employees. We took a number and had barely sat down when we were called. A lovely, grandmotherly Islander lady checked over our paperwork, fingerprinted us with a crazy scanner machine and told us we were ready for our interview.
Heart pounding, telling myself over and over that we were excellent Visa candidates, we waited not very long at all before we were called. The guy was a handsome and young, but never-the-less serious, American man and after we were fingerprinted, he started asking questions.
Bob was asked first his reasons for traveling, where he would work and what his qualifications were. For reasons that remain mystical to me, he couldn't just say his university degrees. After a minute of waffling/ mumbling, he final spat out the name of a degree similar to his, but not exactly the same. Mr Serious, I'm pretty sure, was struggling not to laughing at him, as he was obviously looking at the correct information on his magical screen, and Bob's struggle was apparently extremely amusing. Much to my surprise, he did not ask to see Bob's degrees at this point. Instead he looked over our passports and asked for the wedding certificate and children's birth certificates. At this point, nerves swallowed me whole, and desperate to prove we did, in fact, know the content of our paperwork I shrilled "It's our wedding anniversary today!" Mr Serious smiled and said "Congratulations! One year?" "No, four!" We replied in unison. Mr Serious did a cursory glance over our paperwork, smiled and said "Your Visas are approved!" I'm fairly certain that most other people would have been asked more questions, but our friend was keen to get rid of the inexplicably nervous, sweaty people who had no idea of proper conversation volumes.
We walked out at 10:24am on Cloud 9!
The remainder of the week was spent selling items on Gumtree. We started on Monday, at around 11:00pm and as of 4:00pm today have sold everything but our Queens sized bed and a handful of baby items. The place is
magical. I priced items fairly, but also, so that if we sold everything we wanted to sell, we'd make our removal costs. So far I've only taken a $25.00 hit. I'm pretty thrilled! People are super weird though. I've had lots of ridiculous offers, and people making out they're doing
me a favour. Dude, I'm selling stuff, not raising money for charity. You're not being benevolent, you're buying a lounge.
We also had a dent in our car mended, in the hopes we can sell it soon for a good price. We'll see. Scammers, scammers
everywhere.We have a nice young lady coming to see it Saturday, right in the thick of our proposed garage sale, so hopefully she'll be too overwhelmed by the great unwashed of Woy Woy to barter and will just cough up the money.
Other than that, we are prepared. We have our Vias, tickets (round 2, first round was in Maidens, not Barnett, which conflicted with my Visa), the removalists come tomorrow and we seem to be making head way with finding a home. It's extremely tricky financially as while some only ask for a nominal application fee, others demand first month's rent down before even considering your application, which means we can essentially only apply for one of these properties at once, being cautious in case we are approved for another home in the mean time, and need to pay the security deposit. With a possible week turn around on getting the money back, this could really set us back in our goal of finding a home before arrival. But our little family is so used to flying by the seat of its pants, and usually landing on our feet, I'm sure we'll be okay in the end!
