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.