Ovahimba

Let her practice the route many times until she knows it by heart. You can sit in the car with her the first few times. Problems usually arise when they get frazzled by unfamiliar situations. One way to get her to concentrate more is to show her the fines for moving violations like running stop signs. Chinese women definitely understand money.

As with many situations in life, it helps if you have a lot of money. If you're rich, Chinese parents will overlook a lot. If your finances are marginal, plan on rough road ahead.

I just spent much of the day dropping off a visa application. The lines at the SF Consulate have become horrendous. I spent two hours waiting in line only to have the window closed for lunch when I was within 5 minutes of the front of the line. Then there was another hour wait for them to come back from lunch. If the SF Consulate is in your jurisdiction, I suggest using a visa service now. You can be one of those 20 passports dropped on the counter by couriers and irritate all the others waiting in line.

My wife and I were thinking of a two week trip to France this spring. Her visa requirements look like a bank loan. In addition they want booked roundtrip tickets and confirmed hotel reservations for "each single night". Its doable but I'd hate go through all that work and find out she was unlikely to get a travel visa. My wife has a 10 year green card. Has anyone else applied for these visas?

We are the "entitled people"???????? Not all Americans have "Big houses, big cars, big TV's. Nor do we all have it the waty we want it. Just wondering what your motives were for this statment??? I'm just blowing off steam about American attitudes I guess, and of course they are generalizations. I think if you compare the average living space of an American and Chinese citizen, ours is substantially bigger and we take it for granted. Look at all the junk we can stow away in our garages. In Africa I've travel in the back of a pickup with 22 other people. Typically in third world countries you don't see trucks travel unless they are fully loaded down, otherwise its just wasting gas. I don't know about your neck of the woods but here in California most pickups I see are empty. Guys buy them so they can strut around. We have been the world's designated hyper-consumers driving other economies. Its only last year that reality began to strike. Somehow we assumed that we could keep using those credit cards to keep accumulating all those things like big TVs.

I have been fortunate to have done lots of world travel and have had a chance to see slums all over the world, all over Latin America, Cairo to South Africa, Jakarta, Manila... When I see these places I often scratch my head and think WTF. China and India as economic powers are often mentioned in the same sentence, but the living conditions for the average person are very different. China does not have the poverty, filth and beggars that you see in India. I think India gave up on population control ever since they tried to exchange radios for sterilization jobs. I suppose we can forget it and have lots of children but we would have to live like those in Bangladesh (assuming no massive wars). Not likely. China in my opinion is headed in the right direction with the one child policy. There are lots of problems with it as mentioned above, as with trying to confront any human impulse. There are NO perfect answers. And for sure such policies are beyond the comprehension of Americans, for we are the entitled people, entitled to big houses, big cars, big TVs, entitled to have it just the way we want it.

"Will you just watch where you're going!". I have tried to instill in her the seriousness of any auto accident. She at first didn't believe how much it cost to fix a dent in the US. She doesn't realize the misery and expense of a protracted lawsuit if you were to injure or kill someone. Fortunately we knew the other party and paid them $400. We both had older cars and didn't care about the damage enough to go to a body shop. I guess there is some truth to the Asian driver stereotype.

I'm all for early potty training, earlier the better. I don't like changing diapers that much either. But based on what I observed, there is a cost to their method, and that is cleaning up after baby. I was hesitant to hold him or play with him for long. I was hoping to be the only one in the family not to get peed on, until I sat in an already deposited puddle. Mother inlaw at one point showed me the efficient way to wipe up a turd with the single stroke of a rag. So there was a steady stream of soiled pants, rags, quits, chair pads, etc, to be washed each day. The two weeks I was there they didn't seem to make much progress. Imagine several months of the above. Many families hire nannies to do this job.

We just got back from a three-week trip to Shenyang to see the inlaws and to show them our one year old baby boy. An issue arose over toilet training. Apparently they start teaching the skill at around 6 months where the babies wear pants with a slit down the crotch and no diaper. At certain times of the day they hold the babies legs apart and make a hissing sound to get them to go. Chinese houses however are more amenable to handling little messes. Most of their bathrooms for example can be hosed down. It is not possible with carpets and the wood construction that we have. For the Chinese mothers out there that have seen the methods in China and the US, how do they compare? How long does the Chinese method normally take?

How you tell if the ingredients in your dish are fresh. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TfZdAJD-mg

14 months after the interview the welcome letter has arrived. I guess the government subliminally felt all the indignant vibes from CFLers in my recent posting and gave it up.

Adding to above, that is after meeting legal presence requirements and passing the written test.

In California, if you have a Chinese drivers license, they will issue you a 60 day temporary drivers license which can be renewed 6 times up to a year from original date. I would definitely check her out in a empty parking lot before letting her loose with your car though. Chinese standards for issuing drivers licenses are highly questionable.

contacted onbusman ? yes - do this. We had three different ways to rattle their cage. They all said to check back in 90 days, so that gave us one probe every month. Try the ombudsman, find a Congressman who will at least forward your inquiry to the USCIS and pass along the response, and schedule an InfoPass appointment. In our case, the first round got the response that they had just initiated the program where an AOS could be approved without waiting for the FBI background check and to wait and see if that would get it going. If you file a lawsuit, or file a Freedom of Information request, that can provide an excuse for them to do nothing while that request is being processed, although others have had luck with filing the writ of mandamus lawsuit. Thanks for the advice. Seeing an ombudsman might be my next move if I don't get a response from my latest inquiry last month.

Any reason why ? I have no idea. As the OP stated, its hard to get a hold of a warm body, at least a warm body that knows anything, and infopass has been useless. There were no problems at the interview. My status on the website was last updated Oct 07. I have no criminal history if in fact the FBI is checking me. The only flag I can think of is I have traveled to about 65 countries.

14 months after interview and still waiting for the green card. We did get a letter that acknowledged we called about it at least.

That method of eating rice is common among the working classes in China where you have to get it down, and get to work in short order. My family has always done it that way and it is quite efficient. However in a restaurant or around better company, you do slow it down a bit and not make any wolfing noises. Around my inlaws I don't bring the bowl to my mouth and am quite dainty in transfering the rice. It is a bit rude I guess, but like spitting the majority do it.

My wife is finicky about eating some American foods as well. Steak and spaghetti have all but disappeared from my diet. For the sake of argument though, I don't focus on Chinese vs American, but rather healthy vs unhealthy. Looking at it this way I think a lot of the meals we eat in the US would not compare well. For example if she doesn't want to try burgers and fries, I don't push it. She has tried pizza and will eat it after removing the harder crust, and then taking off the topping, and then scraping off the cheese. Its fun having pizza just to watch her do that.

Here is a photo of the stamp she got. I just figured out how to post a picture. http://i34.tinypic.com/r08u3o.jpg

Thanks for the replies. I forgot to mention that she got a new I-94 in her passport with the same stamp. In both cases "Oct 4, 09" was handwritten in a space provided on the stamp in addition to the entry date.

On Oct 5 my wife returned from a short stay in China and used her AP document to get back in. At the top of the page, the issue date is: 10/15/2007 and expiration date is: 10/15/2008. When she returned to the states, immigration put a stamp at the lower right indicating she was paroled until Oct 4, 2009. Does this mean the AP document has been renewed and good for travel within an additional year? Or does it just indicate her present status, in the AOS process and waiting for her 2 year green card? We might travel outside the country in May of 2009. It would be nice not to have to apply for another AP document.

That reminds me of a cartoon strip I saw a while back. A woman sitting in a dental chair having work done had a hold of the dentist by the crotch. The caption read: "I'll let you know it it hurts". Coming from China there is good chance that your SO's teeth have never been throughly cleaned. My wife had a tartar build up that looked like it have been there for ten years, even though she had her teeth cleaned by a Chinese dentist 3 months before coming to the US. The latest recommendations are brush two times a day with a fluoride toothpaste. Floss is not common in China, even in the big cities, but it is important to use to ward off gum disease.

I am currently reading this book. "China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power". It's an easy read, presenting images of modern China and it gives you some insights into Chinese thinking.

To order transcripts go here http://www.irs.gov/individuals/article/0,,id=110571,00.html

I got a similar RFE. As it turned out simple copies of my tax returns didn't hold much weight without W-2s or 1099s. If you didn't already, send them IRS transcripts. Some of these RFEs don't get into specifics and you have to guess what the generic message means.