I hope that everyone who celebrates Easter is having a good weekend...
and that everyone else is having a good weekend too! Not too much
chocolate remember... I've attached a little something for you 🙂
I've done a pile more work on Kajikit's Corner this month,
and added an extra photo album section for my papercrafts. I
haven't uploaded any of my scrapbook pages as yet (but one
day I will) so for now I have pages for all the greeting
cards I made last year, and one for items I have made for
swaps... This isn't everything I've made, but it's most of
it... and there won't be anything more to add for awhile,
because I've had to give up swapping with anyone outside
Australia for the rest of the year (read on to find out why)
jagcon.compapercraftsOpen ↗
.html If you want to see my scrapbook stuff, I have two
online galleries which are linked to that page. The
Scrapjazz Gallery is more complete, but Memory Makin' Divas
draws more comments from viewers...
We got some exciting news the other day. John rang me up at
8am to tell me that he had finally received another letter
from the Immigration people and he is approved! So now it's
my turn, and my paperwork is on its way to Australia. Once
it gets here I'll have to fill out some more forms, have a
medical and police check, and then lastly have an interview
at the Sydney Consulate. It was a bit of a shock to discover
that I'll have to go to Sydney - I just assumed that the
consulate here in Melbourne would do it, but Immigrant Visas
are ONLY done through Sydney. I guess I should be glad I
live in Melbourne and not Darwin, far North Queensland, or
Perth, because I'd STILL have to fly to Sydney and it would
cost a heck of a lot more. The remaining part of the visa-
getting process SHOULD be a lot quicker than the first half
- my major problem will be affording all the bits and pieces
I have to pay for at fairly short notice... After waiting
around patiently for four years for the time to be right, it
feels rather strange to be thinking that I may have my visa
within three months (if all goes well, and I can pass the
medical, pay for everything, and show them enough convincing
evidence of our realationship... (lol - that was a typo but
it's appropriate 🙂 I started working on scrapbooking my
'evidence' last night... I figure it's worth doing anyway
I'm a bit worried because most of our communication is
verbal and there's no record of it. I can't show them phone
bills because John always phones ME, and he's not a letter-
writing type person, and a lot of our electronic
communication was lost when my last computer suddenly
died... I'm desperately hoping that what we DO have is
enough. (actually, I'm pretty sure it is... but my anxiety
is kicking in and making me worry about worst-case-
scenarios!) This didn't really seem REAL until we got the
letter, and now it is... unmistakably so. We planned our
wedding twice over during the first three years, but then we
kind of gave up and settled into our amorphous long-distance
relationship without any real certainty that it was ever
going to change. We had each other and we had the phone and
that had to be enough. And now there is a set timeframe for
us to look at again and this time it's for real and not just
our overeager anticipation. So we have to adjust all over
again - we are not waiting for an unspecified length of time
for an uncertain process with an uncertain result at the
end... This is for real and this is for ever and this will
be happening SOON! Ack!!!!!!!!! I'm excited and impatient
and scared and terrified all at once - I hate to think how
I'll feel once they finally give me my magic brown envelope
and stamp that visa into my passport!
For those who want the real timeframe, from here on in it
SHOULD take about three months to get to the interview in
Sydney (one month to get the paperwork, one month to gather
the papers I need, and a one-month wait for the interview
after I return it). When I get the visa it's valid for six
months from the date of issue, so I have that long to get
ready to move, and ninety days after I get there to get
married. John is tentatively looking at organising our
wedding for February - specifically Valentine's Day! It's
funny - once upon a time in another lifetimes we started
trying to arrange our wedding for Valentine's Day 2001,
because we had no idea of how long and drawnout the whole
process would be... At this point I don't really care when
or where it
is. It's just a piece of paper. Inside our heads we've
already been married for four years, because we
committed ourselves to each other until Death Do Us
Part, for Better or Worse on the day I accepted his
proposal (August 10, 2000). The wedding once I get to
the USA will just be a formality required to make it
official. It won't make me feel any more like Karen Gory
than I already do 🙂
--
~Karen AKA Kajikit Lover of shiny things...
Made as of 2 April 2004 - 61 cards, 28 SB pages (plus 2
small giftbooks), 52 decos & more!
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