(I know this is the same post that you have all seen for the hundredth time, but we need your help) First, let me introduce us since we are new here. My name is Caleb Kitchen, and my ladies name is Lin Lin (Lily is what she goes by a majority of the time when we aren't talking Chinese) the reason I keep speaking in plurals is that this is a joint account I made for both of us. Allow me to explain. We are both students at Purdue University, I am an Anthropology student with minors in OLS (Leadership), Global Studies, and Asian Studies (since our school doesn't have a Chinese minor/major system yet. Oddly though if I take all the Chinese classes offered and write a few book reports on literature I end up with an Asian Studies minor...odd right?). Lily is a Graduate Student of HTM or Hospitality and Tourism Management. So now that you know a bit about us we don't need to feel as though we are such strangers. The love stories and such of how we met and all that lovely stuff can be saved for later when we have more time, plus she likes to gush over all that sort of stuff. We are both students and as students we met on campus. She had no intention of ever falling for an American, nor did I intend to fall so helplessly for a foreigner. But as fate so often has a mind of its own, we did happen to fall in love with one another and we just want to handle it appropriately now. All of this sort of came out of no where, which brings us to this site. I frequent Jocelyn Eickenberg's site "speakingofchina.com", a wonderful blog of an American woman who fell in love with a Chinese man. If you haven't been there, do it...now, this post will be here when you get done. So in a time where we felt so alone and as if all the work to be together was so hard, I turned to her blog to assure me my feelings are still ok and that the love of my life didn't have to be American. In a moment of weakness I emailed Mrs.Eickenberg, I say weakness because I am such a calculative person I often don't do such "crazy" things as email strangers asking them for life advice. But realizing my need for assistance she responded (and if you are reading this now Mrs.Eickenberg know that sometime in the future you and your husband will be invited to our wedding as our true guests of honor. I know, and you will be too nice to admit that we owe our love and our life to your help.) and in her response it brought me here. I know this post is growing long and I should cut to the point. I see other posts on here and although they are helpful and we have learned a lot, it all sort of seems overwhelming. Doing twenty hours of class (which results in around 25-30 actual hours after class lectures and homework) then working thirty hours, it sort of keeps being something we are too exhausted to do when it comes to the few hours we are rushing different places. Also, she is here on a student visa and unlike all, or most, of the other stories on here we don't have a lot of money and we don't need child or other visa's to get her to the United States as she is already here. Is there anything then that we don't have to do? Any paperwork that differs so that we can do a change of visa status and not have to worry about getting her into the country? It is a big scary process, and although we are in our mid twenties and still young and stupid, we both have sat and understood that we need to make sure to do this right the first time. So could you guys help us out? Thanks everybody. Caleb and Lily
