Hello out there!

Rich and Lenochka · May 30, 2010

Hi-

I've been a member on VisaJourney since Feb.'10 but just found this thread and thought I would say hello.

I live in California, been here most of my life. I recently went through a divorce, but the marriage was over long before it was ended legally. When I was separated I decided to look around on foreign dating sites as I figured I would be able to find women to write to, and receive letters from, with little risk of real attachment.

After making penpal friends with a few women over several months I met Beata in early June '09. She lives in Novosibirsk, Russia, but fortunately her English is very good so we had no trouble communicating. She was on a website that features mostly Russian women and it didn't take long to know that this was a seriously different relationship. We hit it off immediately in our e-mails and within a couple of months of writing to each other daily, then speaking on the phone, we decided we wanted to meet. We started "seeing" each other on skype a few times a week, and discussed places where we might meet. I obtained a passport (I had never been off the north American continent) and we found that neither of us needed a visa to visit Hong Kong. We arranged to meet in late November '09 and then spent 8 wonderful days in Hong Kong. It was all very romantic, and the time seemed right, so I asked her to marry me. With no hesitation she said "yes", and coincidentally there were about a thousand jewelry stores in Hong Kong. I bought her engagement ring. This was putting the cart before the horse, because I knew very little about the visa process. All I knew for sure was that I have friends who are married to foreign brides, and that they had to wait for awhile to clear up some red tape.

After Hong Kong I began looking into the K-1 process, and shortly after the new year began I found VisaJourney. This website has been a real blessing, and helped me to navigate the process of submitting an I-129f.

Upon returning home from the orient we ramped up our correspondence, and made plans for me to visit her hometown. In April I made the 31 hour transit between Los Angeles and Novosibirsk, and we spent another 10 days together. It was even more wonderful than Hong Kong, and and now we began talking more about our long term relationship plans. The I-129f was sent to the CSC at the end of April, and as of today (May 30) I have an NOA-1 and am waiting for our NOA-2. We talk on skype daily, and we feel married in many different ways but being apart is very difficult. There is a simultaneous feeling of connection that is tempered by the incredible emptiness of being apart.

VisaJourney is a tremendous website, and it is incredibly useful to help me deal with the loneliness of not having my Beata with me. Every day when we talk on Skype we discuss the latest news from VisaJourney. We look to see how many more NOA-2's have been received, and watch as the lucky applicants ahead of us move one step closer to being together. It really helps to see that the other members of this "club" are having their dreams come true. It gives us hope.

Meanwhile, I am so grateful for skype and e-mail and SMS and decent phone connections (at reasonable prices). I don't know how this would be possible 15 years ago, corresponding via "snail mail" as the only source of communication would have been pure torture. Our daily communication using different media helps keep me sane.

Good luck to all of you in your romantic endeavors.