It’s Sunday September 5th.
Still, no baby Annika.
Mom is healthy, baby is still moving inside of her. She’s just not ready for the world yet.
If she doesn’t come by Tuesday, there will be an induction ceremony, with a possible birth Wednesday.
Since we’re all waiting, here’s a song from a Minnesota native, and alt-rock godfather whose title seems appropriate.
Baby Annika hasn’t even taken her first breath and she’s already late.
Ok, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. Any doctor will tell you that only about 5% of babies are actually born on their due dates. Still, V is heavy. She wants her in her arms, not her belly. Even the due date of August 30th was a little arbitrary. It’s our third actually. August 30th was chosen by our American doctor because it was between the other two. Our Peruvian doctor pegged her arrival at Sept. 2nd. He may be right after all.
Since my last post, we’ve painted the baby’s room pink. We’ve got a crib courtesy of our friends Shaun and Jen. Baby will also be the best dressed tot in town. Seriously, we’ve got a ton of clothes. Hopefully she’ll get a chance to wear them all. We’ll see.
We’re still waiting.
I promise to blog more in the future.
Hopefully we’ll have a new member of the family for the next post.
Update: I got some bad info. I’ve been told its not Commonwealth of Kentucky causing the problem, It’s South Dakota. My apologies. Minnehaha County (Sioux Falls) says it won’t get to the background check request until Friday at the earliest. This pushes my start date back to Monday at the earliest.
I’ve got a job.
It didn’t take long.
Starting soon I’ll be working for a company that provides a specific type of customer service to a major computer software company. I’m being deliberately vague because this blog is theoretically open to just about anyone in the world and I’ve already signed a stack of confidentiality forms.
My start date is up in the air because along with the lip-zipping paperwork, the company is doing a background check. Three states were checked. The two One mid-western states I lived in the longest cleared with the Nordic-style efficiency residents here are known for. It’s my old Kentucky home seems to be taking its sweet tea time.
Strangely, the bluegrass state is the place where I did the least amount of damage. I worked all the time and lived there just two years. Still, its their southern-style bureaucracy that’s keeping me from moving on.
I should have started today. Now I’ll start tomorrow. Maybe. ?????
Sorry its been a while since the last blog post. I really don’t have a good excuse. I’m not spending a lot of time on-line these days. It’s not like I don’t have time, I’ve got plenty of that, I’ve just been using the internet for the basics: e-mail, news headlines, and sports scores.
What have I been filling my time with? That I really can’t answer either. Vanessa and I have seen some people, made a few trips to the supermarket and been to the mall a few too many times, but its not like we’ve been constantly busy.
In a nutshell, my excuse is I really have no excuse. I promise you, I will keep the blog up and running even though this gringo is no longer in Peru. So without further ado, here’s a quick rundown of my thoughts of the U.S. so far.
We’ll start with our trip home. We were packed like sardines in a hot tin can flying at 10,000 feet for the ride from Lima to Miami. The airline had canceled an earlier flight, making the ride very uncomfortable for everyone.
Once we got to Miami we had to walk like two miles from the gate to immigration. Since Vanessa was entering on a new visa, we were shuttled to a separate room. There were about 40 other people in this room and we we’re called up one at a time. I’m not sure if there was any method to how each immigrant was called. We arrived in the room around 3 p.m., there were some people who were in and out of the room in less than 15 minutes. Others were complaining how they had been there for hours. We were both hoping our wait wouldn’t be long.
There were three officers working the desk. One was the cliched grandfatherly cop figure you’ve seen in a thousand movies. He was even tempered, knew what he was doing, and treated everyone in his line with respect.
The guy in the middle was the Bumbler. He was a little overweight, had glasses and worked slowly. Throw him in a striped suit and he could be a stand-in for the Bumblebee man from The Simpsons.
The Bumbler was constantly being harassed for being so slow by the last officer at the desk. This guy was your stereotypical a@#hole cop. He was a real ball buster. Everyone in his line got 1,000 questions about why they were entering the United States.
Vanessa and I were hoping the grandfatherly officer would call our name, but his shift was ending. That left the Bumbler and the ball buster. Sure enough, the ball buster called our names. I was worried. We had already been waiting a little over an hour, had a flight to catch at a gate halfway across the airport and was in no mood for to play 101 questions.
Then something happened. Vanessa said one little word that made things all better.
Yes.
When she answered in English you could have knocked the officer over with a feather. He was shocked. His mood totally changed. He started making small talk. They swapped stories about pregnancy (turns out his wife is due about the same time as Vanessa), he asked her about winters in Minnesota and other non-immigration related questions. Before we knew it, we were off and running (literally) for the gate.
We got to the gate just before boarding had begun. Whew.
Since we’ve been back almost a month here are a few random thoughts:
Trees. The U.S. is very green. Flying over Miami we saw lots of palm trees. Landing in Minneapolis we saw lots of regular leafy trees and even being here in Fargo-Moorhead I’m just amazed at how green everything is.
Fresh air. Despite everyone here driving cars, the air is so stinking clean compared to Lima. Although, with all these green trees and blooming flowers the allergies kicked into high gear.
Chewy, chewy? Americans here’s a dirty little secret about your food, you don’t have to chew. The food doesn’t let you. Two bites and everything slides down the gullet, you don’t have to swallow. Seriously.
That’s it for now. I’ll try to blog more as time allows.
If you read this on Thursday, I’ll likely be in the air.
We leave just after 8 a.m. and we’ll be back in Minnesota after 10 p.m.
We are almost home.
I’ve spent the day running around and trying to put the finishing touches on our suitcases. It’s a lot of packing, weighing and packing again. It’s hard to put almost two years of stuff (plus stuff for a person who’s not here yet) in five boxes. There’s a lot of packing and purging.
It’s hard to believe this day we’ve been waiting for is almost here. I know I’ve changed. How? I’m not sure yet. If you’re looking for some deep introspection about my life in Peru, I’m sorry. I’m not ready for that yet. It will come later after we adjust to life in the U.S.A. I do worry about possible reverse culture shock. Let’s be honest, we haven’t been in the U.S. for almost two years. That’s a long time.
Peru, you’ve been great. We’ll be back someday.
Goodbye.
I’ve got to pack.
Saturday was baby shower day here in Peru.
A baby shower here really isn’t that much different than one back home. There’s food, there’s women and no men. In fact, I was the only guy there (besides the waiters, more on that in a minute) until I left to meet my old factory™ mates for lunch.
Shower time
There are some differences. After all, there were waiters hired to serve the food. The wait staff (two guys) walk around constantly offering finger food and drinks. Since this was a late morning, early afternoon affair juice and soda was served. There was a mimosa option, but the party planners decided against it. It is also common for people hosting these things to rent a toldo, which is like a big outdoor canopy.
This baby shower was more like a luncheon than a shower. There were 60 people invited and I’m told they all showed. The party started at 10:30, by the time I left at 11:30 about half of the guest list had arrived. That’s pretty good for Peruvians. They are always late. No, this isn’t stereotypical. Peruvians readily admit that they are never on time and it was a constant problem at the factory™.
Sandwich anyone?
People socialized, ate and watched V open her presents. I left before the present opening. I met my former co-workers at the mall for rotisserie chicken. You can’t get any more Peruvian than that. It was good to see those crazy kids again. It’s probably the last time I’ll see them. Who knows if our paths may cross in the future.
There was another significant last on Saturday. My last bus ride. Since I happened to have my camera with me I snapped a few pictures of the bus. It wasn’t the cleanest I’ve been on, but it wasn’t the worst. The bus was mostly empty when I started shooting. When I took the the first picture the flash caught a girl sitting a few seats ahead of me looked at me funny and started laughing. It’s good to know the gringo still has some entertainment value.
The clock is ticking. Just four more days and we’ll be back in the U.S.A.
Let the packing begin!
Since V and I are both done with work, we’ve been busy cleaning and packing.
It’s amazing how much crap (and I mean that in a nice way) two people can accumulate in almost two years. We’ve given away four industrial-sized bags of clothing and shoes to Marcello, the security guard that works on our block. He was more than happy to take it all. What he’s going to do with size 40 (he looks like 32, tops) Levi’s is beyond me. That’s not my business. I’m glad he took them. Honestly, I don’t see how we would be able to take it all home.
While we’ve been purging old clothes, we’re binging on baby clothes. Dresses, onesies, pajamas, tops and bibs are already piling up. Vanessa has a baby shower Saturday, meaning more baby swag is coming our way. People tell me collecting baby clothes can be an exercise in futility because baby can enter the world already be too big for her britches. This means plies of baby clothes are destine to never have their tags cut, forced into life in a drawer somewhere until garage sale season where they may have another chance. Thankfully, baby clothes are small and light. I don’t think getting them home will be much of a problem.
We plan to do more packing and possibly more purging this weekend.
Yesterday was our doctor day. Vanessa had her last pre-natal appointment in Peru, an appointment with the endocrinologist and I had an appointment with the cardiologist. We’re happy to report everything went well. Baby is fine. V is fine. My heart is good. Actually, I’ve lost almost 40 pounds since I started (18 kg to be exact) seeing the doctor. He says I could likely go off the low-grade high blood pressure pills I’ve been using if I drop another 15 kg. It’s amazing what eating fresh food and sleeping at night can do for you. I’m encouraged that we are moving back in spring/summer. That means many walks and hopefully bike rides for me. Those extra lbs. could disappear. Of course, I’ve got to eat well and stay away from America’s over-sized portions.
Today I’m off to the English Factory™ to get my last paycheck. Then its off to the bank to close my account and get my CTS money. CTS is like a Peruvian unemployment benefit. Companies create the CTS account in your name and deposit U.S. Dollars in it every time you get paid. When you leave a job you are entitled to this money, but you can’t access it until you get a letter from your employer stating you are no longer working. I figure there must be about $1000 there. It will be nice to have some traveling money. How long it will last, nobody knows.
One other note, somebody hacked into my Yahoo e-mail account and sent spam to everyone in my contact list. I’m told the link leads to a website with a Russian address touting cheap Viagra. If you get the message from me, DELETE IT. I’ve changed my password. Hopefully that will prevent this from happening again. Sorry.
Remember the apartment?
If you don’t want to click the link, here are the Cliff’s Notes. My father-in-law has an apartment in the business/entertainment district of Miraflores. Nobody had lived in the place for about a decade. We were supposed to live there, but the place was in shambles.
Things have changed.
After a year of on-again, off-again work, its done. Things are different from the floor to the ceiling. New tile and new furniture grace the small space. We were there to clean. Friends of my in-laws are coming to visit and they want to stay in the apartment for a few weeks.
My mother-in-law brought the our maid Maria with us. It was surprising to me that Maria had never been to Miraflores. I suppose she’s had no real reason to go. Still, Miraflores is one of Lima’s most popular places.
Literally next door to the apartment building is a branch of the English Factory’s™ biggest rival. We’ll call it the British English Manufactory®. While we were cleaning, I kept an eye on the classrooms. I had a pretty good view from our 8th floor perch. The teachers at the Manufactory® sat behind desks and never used a black or whiteboard. It’s a different world across the pond.
Anyways, here are some before and after pictures for your enjoyment.
Before - The Bathroom
Before - The living room
Before - The kitchen
Before - The bedroom
Today was the first day of classes at the English Factory™. I wasn’t there. I don’t work there anymore.
To celebrate this development a few colleagues and myself got together last weekend for a few drinks. Trust me, it didn’t get too wild at the American chain restaurant that shall remain unnamed. We sipped some adult beverages, swapped a few stories, shared a few appetizers and went our merry way. It was a small gathering of people whom I will genuinely miss. All the folks who were there I consider friends, I hope they feel the same way.
With all this free time I’ve been back on the job hunt. I’ve applied for three jobs over the past two days. Two of which, I feel I’ve got a legitimate chance to at least land an interview. Keep those virtual fingers crossed.
In the midst of applying for one of the above jobs, I got an e-mail from that particular company thanking me for applying. Thank you? Uh, I wasn’t finished. How can you thank me for something I haven’t done? Weird.
Searching for work is a bit more time consuming than one would think. When you find a job that seems worth applying for, the on-line application process takes about an hour. Every company seems to want different things with the application or has different forms to fill out.
This doesn’t even factor in the time it takes to find a job. That takes time. Job searching is like panning for gold. You have to sift through a lot of sand before reaching the nuggets. Communications is a broad area and the word is common in job listings. Hiring managers think retail clerks, military personnel, forklift drivers and IT specialists all need communication skills to do their jobs. Leaving me with piles of sand.
The countdown to the hometown is on. We are only 15 days away from our big return. Hopefully Lady Liberty can open her arms with a few job opportunities. The latest job loss numbers are encouraging, although the market is kind of getting battered by the now deadly European debt crisis.
What would you do for $1000 dollars?
This isn’t the tag-line for a new reality TV show. It’s my reality and I’m not sure what the answer is.
Through the English Factory™ I was enrolled in a Peruvian retirement account. Since I’m not a Peruvian national, I’m entitled to close the account and take the money. Right now, the balance is just a few hairs short of one grand. Sounds great on paper, but it might cost me about that much to get it.
Finding out what we need to do was a one month odyssey. Vanessa spent a lot of energy trying to get in contact with anybody from the investment company. Phone calls and e-mails went unreturned. A supervisor at the English Factory™ was nice enough to call the company for me. He actually got a hold of someone and passed along Vanessa’s contact information. Still, nobody called.
Yesterday I hit paydirt. A representative was coming to work to talk with my boss. This was my one chance for guidance. Through an interpreter, here’s what I found out.
First, I need to gather a bunch of paperwork. Includeing certified copies of my Peruvian ID, American passport and a letter from the English Factory™ saying that I’m no longer working. I’ll also need letters from my bank and retirement accounts in the U.S. proving that I’ve had accounts established for at least three years.
So far so good. Getting that done won’t be difficult, a few phone calls and a trip to a notary could get that ball rolling. The letter from the English Factory™ is being drafted as we speak. (I need it to close my bank account.) Once that paperwork is secured, things get unnecessarily complicated.
The pile of paper mentioned above needs to be “approved” by a Peruvian government agent in the U.S. The nearest Peruvian Consulate to where we’re going is Chicago. I know, I’ve been there. It does travel to the Twin Cities area once a year. Still, that’s a trip somewhere to pay a few bucks for somebody to stamp a letter.
Once stamped, it all needs to be sent back to Peru and delivered to Ministry of Exterior Relations. Then, the letters need to be officially translated from English to Spanish by a government approved translator. Finally, they will be delivered to the investment company who will eventually transfer it to an account of my choice.
To get all this done I’ll need to give somebody here, likely my mother-in-law, power of attorney. We were planning to do that anyways. It’s an insurance policy just in case there are any loose ends we need to tie up here when we’re gone.
Here’s a recap, I’ll need: three letters, a trip to a notary, a trip to either Chicago or the Twin Cities, some official stamps, air mail back to Peru, grant somebody power of attorney, find somebody to stand in line at the Ministry, find a translator and then wait to get the cash.
Whew!
After spending a year tracking down and filling out immigration papers I thought we were done. No such luck.
It’s a lot of time, energy and unknown fees. Vanessa and I were wondering if its all worth it.
What say you?