Make A Run For the Border

After spending a week at my parent's place waiting for my passport to be returned from American Immigration, and then another week sitting around waiting for my flight back to Matthew, I am finally back in the US of A. The flight home was a bumpy one, but in the end I got here in one piece. A fitting analogy to the adventure we have been through trying to accomplish something as simple as living with your spouse legally. 

Just for the record, no, I am not an American. My status is officially 'Permanent Resident', also known as 'Alien Resident' (I'm not even kidding...I even have an Alien Registration Number). This means that I have to fulfill a bunch of requirements before I'm allowed to stay. If I fulfill them within a certain period of time, then I will be granted Citizenship. I feel a lot like a home appliance from Walmart. As long as I don't break down before my warrantee is up, then they can never send me back to Customer Service.

The first week here was exciting.

Matt treated me like a sack of potatoes during the Irish Famine (ie. like GOLD).

Things haven't changed too much though, so I fell back into my normal routine of eating/sleeping/web-surfing quite naturally. There are some small adjustments that I have made to my daily schedule.

a. I'm forcing myself to wake up earlier so as not to waste the beautiful daylight hours.

b. Every day or so I go through my Pimsleur's Audio Japanese Course. Sumimasen! Eigo ga wakarimasu ka?

c. I am looking for some short term work before I leave for Japan. It's not easy. 

In the meantime, I am back volunteering at the Steeple People Supply Store, sorting, pricing and drinking lots of the free coffee. (Please people, when donating clothes to organizations, leave the dirty underwear out. If you won't wear them, no one will.) 

With summer here I'm more focused on food then ever. I've pulled out all sorts of cookbooks from the library, and I make trips to the grocery store just to drool over the produce section. Finally, local green things are pushing their way out of the ground and I don't have to solely rely on California or Florida to be the source of my salad. Matt seems unaffected by the current seasonal miracle of asparagus and artichokes. Brats and burgers was his main source of nutrition while I was away and he doesn't seem to be breaking with that trend now that I'm back. Obviously, we have a hard time grocery shopping together, but there are always occasions to celebrate. On-sale scallops made it into the cart this time, along with some olives and a juicy, juicy mango. Hmmmm. Now all I have to do is figure out how to cook scallops.

I should be off. The landlord is coming to inspect the apartment this morning. Apparently it has already been rented, so we are out of here by June 30th!!! Woot! Woot! Summer change is here.