Pre AOS

[DocMartin817]

I now move to this board as Liwen has finally arrived. That in itself is a story. I was to meet her in Portland,OR. She flew in to San Francisco on Dec 10th and I wanted to fly there to meet her, but she was so confident there would be no problem and wanted to not have me spend the money for a flight that she insisted I meet her at the Portland airport. She called me at 6PM to say she was in the USA and would see me later that night. Her flight was to arrive at midnight and I was there early waiting. The flight was late of course and I waited and waited but she was not on it. That seemed so strange, my thinking was that if she had missed her plane she would have called. Of course all types of thoughts were going through my mind, like she was held up in customs or something. At 4:30 in the morning she called me from Boston. Somehow she had gotten on the wrong plane -- both planes were boarding at the same time right next to each other. She then flew back to Chicago and on to Portland where I met her at 3PM on Sunday. She had a long trip and a story to tell her family when she called them -- with lots of laughter about her travels across the USA.

We were married on the next Saturday at our house -- some friends and some family. Very nice and relaxed.

So yesterday I started to do some pre-AOS work. After Christmas I will start to fill in all the forms and mail them off. First stop was my bank where they told me they need her social security number for us to set up joint accounts. Then we went to the local Social Security office where the nice girl who helped us had never done a K-1 before. So I told her Liwen was work eligible on the K-1 and she read some info on the computer and then processed the application -- Liwen was in the system already which suprised the worker and so it looks like she will have her ss# in two weeks. Then we went to the DMV and got her Oregon ID. I had two pieces of paper with her address -- the wedding license and the letter from the Social Security office. So no problem getting her ID. Then we went to the Post Office to add her name to the address at our house. The lady at the Social Security office said to do that, because it was needed for the card to be delivered to Liwen.

I have not worked this week to give Liwen time to adjust and to get ready for Christmas. We will drive to the coast tomorrow so I can show her some of the beautiful Oregon coastline and to do some bird watching.

We have two Asian markets in town the Liwen loves to shop at and also the big chain grocery stores. She keeps saying how much candy there is in the stores and how cheap it is. She also says that no wonder Americans are so fat with so much cheap junk food available.

One final note: Liwen said to me that her biggest fear coming here was how Americans would treat her. Her cross country trip by accident in many ways was a blessing. She said all the people were so nice and so helpful. Her English is okay so she could communicate. But her first experience with Americans all across the country was very positive.

And we have a story to share about how she has been to Boston and I still have not been there.

[frank1538]

I hope the airline had pity on Liwen and didn't charge her for her sightseeing tour of the US. This was one of the reasons I went to GZ. I had these thoughts of Jingwen and the kids getting stuck somewhere or going to the wrong city. Glad Liwen made it back to the west coast.

[DocMartin817]

I hope the airline had pity on Liwen and didn't charge her for her sightseeing tour of the US.  This was one of the reasons I went to GZ.  I had these thoughts of Jingwen and the kids getting stuck somewhere or going to the wrong city.  Glad Liwen made it back to the west coast.

177437[/snapback]

Liwen's main worry was that she only had $200 on her and could not afford the flight back. But the airlines were very gracious and gave her flights back -- after all they made the mistake of letting her on the wrong plane and not checking her ticket.