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Several Minor Problems

Phil & Ningning

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Phil & Ningning

Phil & Ningning

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My sweet Jiening is upstairs sleeping off the jet lag. It feels really good to say that. After she got the visa we went to nanning for the goodbyes with her family. I even got to see the very small village where she grew up and met her 89 year old grandmother. Next we flew back to GZ and took a 500RMB cab ride to Zhongshan for four days of dinners, dim sum, and packing. Some very nice friends drove us to Zhuhai yesterday and saw us to the border.

She presented both her international passport and the HK/Macau passport to the Chinese inspector and he stamped her out of the country in the red one. When we got to the Macau side, we were talking so much I wasn't thinking clearly as she got in line behind me. This is a border we have crossed several times together with never a problem, however, this time the Chinese guard had stamped her international passport. I went through and quickly realized my mistake. They weren't letting anyone wait on the far side, so I slowed my walk to a crawl as I watched behind me with no sign of Ningning. Some woman came to me yelling in Cantonese and pointing back to the other side of the room and I knew something was wrong. I found an immigration guard and asked if he spoke English, and he directed me to the central booth. They escorted me from there to a visa room at the side where I was relieved to see her face. It turned out that she needed to pay a visa fee of $100 MOP/HKD to get the visa in her red passport, since that is the one she left China on. Then they saw her other passport, cancelled the visa in it and processed her through without paying the money. I really didn't care about the twelve bucks. On to the airport.

When checing in for our flight out of Macau, the agent was speaking to Jiening in Cantonese. our bags went on the scale and stayed there and we went to sit in some chairs ont the sidelines and stayed there. Ningning told me there was a problem making sure that we would be sitting together and kept me calm. I have a tendency to become agitated when I pay for a service and don't get it, especially when I had called the airline myself about a month ago to confirm reservations and seating. After a while I refused to sit anymore and went to the counter by myself to see what the problem was. You know, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. With Jiening safely across the room, the woman was forced to speak to me in English so I could get the straight scoop. There was no reservation problem, she was waiting for the immigration people at LAX to call her back to confirm that she did not need a return ticket with a K1 visa! Once I made it clear that I was going to wait at the counter until we were checked in, things happened fairly fast. No return ticket necessary.

Next was the immigration leaving Macau. It seems they had never seen a K1 visa before, either. They asked me if she was my wife. Not yet. I waited. And waited. Then they let her through, kept her passport, and told us to wait. We waited while some manager in an expensive leather jacket and no uniform carried her passport down a hallway and slowly went from office to office trying to determine if it was legit. Finally he came back and said it was okay and she told him it was boarding time. Then he took it into a glass office and a uniformed officer brought it out and said we were free to go.

After landing at LAX the captain came on and said there was another aircraft in our gate so we had to wait just a little more. I accompanied her through the visitor's line and to the immigration counter. These guys knew what a K1 was. The man was very nice, and took all of our documents together. I offered the X-ray tube and he said, "That's hers... I'm not a doctor." He processed me through and told me to wait on the other side. She signed a form or two and told him we were thinking of April 2 as a wedding date, then he let her through. Customs was very simple as usual, and the drive home in the rain was followed by squealing happiness as she looked around her new home. Finally we are together

:blink:

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