kelzm

Whew. Glad to hear the bike is fine! Also that the daughter is fine too And of course that your forms are in the mail. I'm watching the news right now as the weatherman tells me a heatwave is coming this weekend. 105, Joy.

It's not been too bad here lately, it got up to around 86 at one point but now is nicely settled in the 70s. I can handle that! In March we had a heat wave where it was around 105, apparently that's what it's going to be like once summer truly arrives. *sigh*. No aircon in the house either

Hey Kelvan, great to hear you're nearly on your way!

I can't believe how fast time is flying. In September I'll have been here a year. It doesn't seem that long, I only ever realise the amount of time when I think about my family and how long it's been since I've seen them!

Unfotunately I still do not have a job. I've done a number of temp jobs and I have one temp job of 12 hours a week that is pretty much going to go on indefinitely, unless they have to make some staff cutbacks. Sadly 12 hours a week of low pay isn't really enough. I've got an interview in July (they scheduled it for a month out... grrr), it's the first job interview I've had that's actually in my field. I'm trying to stay hopeful for that. The tough thing is that surrounding counties have laid off librarians and local schools are actually looking at closing down libraries to save money, my experience and qualifications are as a librarian.

I know that where I live jobs are tough for everyone, we have nearly 17% unemployment in my county and that's only that low as so many people have now been put on furloughs, had hours reduced or are temping, like me. I'm now looking further afield and trying to get used to the fact that I'm going to have to do an hour and a half commute each day if I want to find a job. Eeks!

Apart from the job situation life is good. I'm trying to figure out how to enrol in graduate school (looking for scholarships!) and just starting an exercise program since I have a lot of freetime at the moment. Hope everyone else is well, and doing better in the job department than I am!

Congrats to Ed and Cindy.

Ed - tell Cindy not to stress too much about POE. San Francisco is really good, I've never heard of anyone having any problems there.

Once, on a visit to the US I did get pulled through to secondary processing where I was asked some questions but even there they were very nice and polite, and I was never worried that it would turn out badly. I'm sure that Cindy will get through POE no problem at all.

Though it took me a little longer, reading all these stories I'm glad that I went with the I-130, once I was through POE I didn't have to do anything but wait for the greencard and ssn to turn up in the mail. Then again, I do have to remove my conditions once two years are up, so not sure what kind of trial that will turn out to be

Here's hoping that AOS doesnt bring you all too many more trials.

Lovely pics cdneh! A big congrats on the wedding and here's hoping that all the renovating goes well.

Glad to see people are still trekking along on here. It's been a busy few weeks for me so had a few posts to catch up on.

I'm off next Saturday to an ANZAC day celebration which will be the first time that I've met up with other kiwis since I arrived here in September. Looking forward to driving up to San Jose and hearing some familiar accents!

Things are really moving around here!

Congrats to Cdneh for the smooth landing. Great news Ivanna, I know it's all going to work out for you, and big congrats to Dave and Genna.

I'm doing a temp job right now, which I only got because our neighbour is in HR for the county. I have my name down at 3 staffing agencies, in 3 months I've heard nothing from them or about any of the jobs on their site I've applied for. I'm wondering how much business they have as when I was working at my temp job someone came in from Kelly Services asking if they wanted to use their services and offering to give them a bunch of hours free trial.

On a good note I have had two interviews. Bad note is nearly 6 months later I have no real job.

SFO is a much smaller airport than LAX. To get to immigration simply turn right once you get out of the plane lounge and walk till you see the tapes and lines. Signs for citizens point to the left, for others to the right. The new immigrants line is on the left hand side past the citizen lines, with the line for aircrew on the other side of it. There will be a sign there, just go up, stand behind the yellow line and hold your MBE in front of you. If you ask one of the people messing around with the tape they'll tell you where to go, but you definitely do not line up with all the other NZ visitors.

If you're lucky and beat all the wheelchairs (the send them to the same area) processing takes all of 10 minutes.

Funny you should say that, I was actually considering taking some kind of Medical Admin course as about all I see advertised are scam jobs or jobs in the Medical field.

In a couple more weeks I've been in the USA for 6 months. I'm currently unemployed, I was lucky enough to get some temporary work a couple of weeks back and am doing some part time work, in total though I've spent around 5 weeks or the nearly 6 months with some kind of employment.

I've applied for many jobs and had only two interviews. Most jobs I apply for I never hear back from, even jobs at places like the City or the County that have established HR people. One of the interviews I got to the final 3 and still haven't heard if I got the job.. that was 3 weeks ago, guess I didn't

Anyway. How are others finding the job market? I've expanded my job horizons farther afield from what I used to do in my home country but it's looking bleak right now.

They weigh your carry on now, 7kg is the max, I had something like 12kg of carry on and I had to take things out, I wore my extra sweater, stuffed things in my handbag and pockets, got it to like... 9kgs then she waved me through (probably something to do with the tears in my eyes when she asked what I could leave as it was all my jewellery, some ornaments that belonged to my grandmothers and mother).

Anyway, once I got around the corner I just stuff it all back in.

Heya Justine,

Getting married in California is pretty simple. You need to visit the County Clerk office for the County you're going to get married in. Both of you need to go there to fill in the marriage license and you need picture ID. You will get the license at the time you go there to fill it in.

You then need to have someone officiate the wedding. You are required to have ONE witness, but you can have two. I am not sure if they have to be a US citizen but they do have to provide their address and state. Maybe you could have one US citizen as witness and your friend as the second one, since they're more 'added flavour' and it'll save any worries about legalities.

I don't know what kind of ceremony you're planning but I can tell you how we did our California wedding. I flew in on a Thursday and we went straight to the recorders off at the County Clerk. My husband had already called the clerks office to ask for their list of offciates. They had a couple of people on the list that worked at the county office so he arranged to have one of them officiate our wedding.

We got married on the Saturday, the officiate came to our house and we had my husbands best friend and his wife as our witnesses, ring bearer, best man, photographer - the works! The officiate gave us a nice ceremony in our back yard and we had to give vows etc. Then our witnesses signed the license and the officiate took it away.

It's important to know that the officiate has to file the license with the county clerk office for the marriage to be official. It has to be done within 90 days of the wedding. You usually then have to wait a week or two before you can request a copy of your marriage certificate from the office. Because our officate was from the county clerk's office she took it and put it through the system that Monday so I could go in on the Tuesday and get copies of the certificate to send off to USCIS.

Anyway, March isn't far away! I hope that you manage to sort everything out and have the ceremony you want

Congrats Michelle, and congrats also to Lisa and Tim.

Kiwiana - I know it's not the same as having the original photo, but have you thought about getting some of the photos you can't bring and getting them scanned? Then you can save them on to a usb pen, or use an online storage/print site (I use shutterfly). They'll be there for you to access, or print them out when you get to the usa.

I brought a lot of photos with me and I realised that my son had none of himself growing up, or any of the family events we'd been to so as part of his xmas present I spent time scanning the photo's and made up an album for him. With shutterfly it's very easy, you can get the prints mailed to you, or you can send them to your local target store for pick up in an hour.

Also... if you don't have a scanner and don't want to pay a service to do it, check out your local library. We had scanners at all of our library branches and it was free to use and most internet sites are free also, so you can upload direct from there.

I've been looking to see if there are any other Kiwis living near me, since sometimes I just wish I could hear that familiar accent. Thought I'd post the link to a small but growing group of Kiwis in the San Jose area. I'm just organising to have coffee with one of the members who comes through my town for work. Yippee.

http://expatnewzealander.meetup.com/30/

Wow, things are really humming around here!

For those of you looking at Auto Insurance and planning to live in California here's what I discovered:

- It's mandatory to have Auto Insurance in California. You have to carry proof of it in your vehicle at all times.

- Once you're a resident for more than 10 days you need to get a California drivers license. You can drive on your NZ license for a year, however technically once you've got a physical address and/or get any of those things like bank accounts that mean you've settled, you've become a resident. It's likely something you can get away with if pulled over, but for me I thought it was easiest to just get the license.

- Nearly every job I look at has as a requirement possession of a California's drivers license.

- I got added to my husbands insurance no problem. We use esurance, it was all done online, premiums went up $5 a month to cover me and the additional car we now have. I also got approved by Geico and reasonable prices.

So my advice is to go and sit your California drivers license, you need your social security number to do this. It's pretty simple, I went in and took the test on the same day, the DMV site has all the guides and sample tests online. I sat my practical test a couple of days later. Once you have that California drivers license check out Geico, esurance and progressive. All of them give you online quotes, none charged me extra for being 'foreign'.

You don't need to get the copy of your birth certificate signed. As long as you have the original so that they can sight that and verify that the copy is from a valid original that's all they need, so just remember to take your original and copy in with you and it'll be fine

All I needed to get married here was my passport, the only confusion my local county office had was how to fill in their computerised form as it required them to put in a state and being from New Zealand, I had none. In the end I think they put New Zealand for the state and the country.

I'd suggest giving your local county a call and just asking them what they require from you to get married, it should be simple enough.

Hi all, it's been a little while since I checked in and it seems everyone's been very busy! Hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year. Congratulations to everyone that's moving through the process (especially cdneh, after what they put you through!).

Justine - good to hear from you and hear that things are going so well for you. If you want anyone to add information on the CR1/IR1 process to your blog I'd be happy to help out. Also - I know what you mean about the bread, my son is over for the summer holidays and he complained to me just yesterday about everything being so sweet!

As for me time is ticking away. I've now been here for 4 months, had my first (white) Christmas and New Years with my husband, turned 36 and spent the longest amount of time off work since I left high school. Yes, I'm still unemployed, previously I was trying to find work in the field in which I'm qualified (I'm a librarian), now I'm broadening my search and hoping that something will turn up to get some extra $$ coming in and get me out of the house a little more.

The weathers starting to heat up again here in California and I think winter is just about done. This week I'm heading in to Santa Cruz where I hear there is a World Market that may sell vegemite. We'll see if it'll go ok with that sweet bread!

Great to see that our thread got stickied It seems a long time ago when I was excited just to find Justine and Kim and Russ on here looking for other kiwis, now we have a whole community and our own sticky just like the aussies!

Congrats Kelly and Evan, that's great news.

Cdneh, I'm sorry you're still held up in AP, I hope they put things into action for you asap.

Kim - here's hoping that things don't get too much worse weather-wise. If you don't make it back online, wishing you, Russ and your kids a very happy Christmas together.

Hi Kim, the I-94 is only valid for the 90 days, the EAD will be needed so that you can get employment after your wedding.

Congrats Michelle! So glad it came through before Xmas for you.

I do miss my vegemite. Everytime I go to the supermarket I just stare at the shelves with all the jams in dismay. Plus, the peanut butter is sweet! I did find an unsweetened, salted kind at Trader Joes, thankfully, not quite the same as ETA back home, but it'll do.

are non-kiwis welcome here?

All you gotta do is pass the vegemite test.....

But seriously, we're a friendly bunch around here, non-kiwi's are welcome.

Hi all, been a while since I checked in and I've been busy reading everyones posts to see where they are up to. It's great to see some folks have made progress. Cdneh I really hope your packet gets shipped out to the embassy soon, Michelle - I'm certain your approval is just around the corner.

Dr Stone in Remuera is the same one that Russ went to. I took my car from the Dr's to the X-Ray place, it's not a long walk, but it is around 15 - 25 minutes depending on speed. I then just walked from there to the blood lab and then back to collect my car.

Hard to believe that I've nearly been in the US for 3 months now. I'm still unemployed. I've been applying for a few jobs but have been pretty selective so far, I'm thinking that I need to branch out of my own field and cast my net a bit wider.

Other than that, like Gnomegrrl said I'm glad that winter has come along as the temperature in spring was reaching 40 degrees celsius and I felt like I was melting. Now it's a little chilly but not too cold and I'm liking it just fine.

I spent my first Thanksgiving in Hawaii, which was fabulous. We didn't have a traditional Thanksgiving meal, so I've still got to experience that, but instead we enjoyed a bbq cooked poolside after a day of swimming and relaxing. I'm looking forward to my first Christmas spent with my husband, we're planning on visiting friends in Washington State so there's a chance that I may experience a white christmas, which would be a first for me too.

Today my son turns 15 and not being with him is the only downside to this whole great adventure. He'll be coming over early January for a few weeks though so and I'm busy telling myself that my husband and I managed to keep a relationship going across the ocean, so surely I can do the same with my son.

I hope that good news comes for all who are waiting and that everyone enjoys the holiday season and manages to share it with their loved ones in some way.