What it took

I started this blog with two questions: 1. After a decade abroad, how do you come back home? And 2. What does it take to bring a foreigner with you? I'm pleased to say that we're finally answering question #2. On October 4, Nicolas's green card was approved. After that, the days seemed to crawl by, waiting for the final milestones to get ticked: Nicolas's 30 days notice. My roommate swap that finally took me from a the living room to a proper bedroom with walls and a door. The goodbye parties. The packing. The flights.

Since I'd already booked a flight to visit Nicolas for Thanksgiving and his family had all reserved the date to celebrate, we realized we had to put up with a few weeks' more than the simple 30-days' notice period. It made most sense for me to still fly out and then take Nicolas home with me after Thanksgiving. Those November days crawled by. Eventually, about three weeks ago, I boarded the plane that finally ended out nearly-11-months of long distance. It wasn't exactly the celebratory homecoming I'd anticipated on the other side— Nicolas had a dentist appointment that ran over, and I wound up napping on a bench outside his apartment— but it was a fitting end to the dark comedy that has been the trajectory of our marriage thus far.

En route to Paris, Nov. 22-23, 2018. The end of a nearly 11-month saga of forcible separation due to immigration.

One nap and two t-shirts later, we were ready for Nicolas's going-away party, titled "Nicolas Part Pour Trumpland." Though to California's credit, he was hardly headed for the heart of it.

Dressed on point for Nicolas's going-away party.

No time for jetlag: the following morning, we were up and at 'em, and soon headed off to Versailles, to crash Nicolas's sister's kitchen for the frenzy that is the Thanksgiving preparations. The task was significantly eased thanks to my father-in-law, who'd spotted a Blue-Apron-esque offer for a Thanksgiving meal, which he had the foresight and generosity to pre-order after passing it by us. All the ingredients were conveniently waiting for us in the right proportions, with recipe cards in both English and French. (It was no secret that this deal was marketed to a specific Parisian expat community.) Several hours, bumped elbows, and piggy-back rides later, the table was served (and the kids strictly instructed to stop climbing their Tonton Nico).

The French family around the Thanksgiving dinner table

Thanksgiving 2018, a (hopefully) new Kouzan family Parisian tradition

The next week rolled by in a blur of jet lag and remote working, punctuated by a few wanders across the Marais and the highlight: a trip to the Salon des Vins, one of my favorite Parisian past-times. It's an event with effectively free entry filled with literally thousands of French wine makers lined up to serve you more wine, Champagne, and cognac than you could possibly consume, all for free. Why more people outside of French haven't caught on to this event, I'll never get.

The magic of the Marais, Pierre Hermé, and the Salon des Vins. A week in Paris spent working remotely (me) or not remotely (Nicolas).

Finally, without much of a proper visit to Paris and hardly a moment to relish our reunion, we were packing Nicolas's bags and cleaning out his dad's apartment where he'd had the good fortune to spend the past 11 months rent-free. With just a quick pit stop for a cascara infusion at Caféothèque to humor his beleageuring wife, Nicolas said goodbye to Paris and headed off with me to Orly Airport for what would be the longest flight that either of us have ever taken, direct from Paris to San Francisco. After a brief detainment at customs, we were free to go and finally resume our life together, hoping for better luck on this side of the planet.

Nicolas's big move to SF, complete with a celebratory beer at our local Beer Hall.

Since then we've been settling in to life in San Francisco, checking out local bars and ice cream shops and enjoying coming home to each other each evening. With the price tags hovering over this city, we haven't been treating ourselves to much out on the town, but it's often enough to just settle in to a beer and a Netflix episode on our futon in the mini-living-room I've built under our lofted bed. It's been surprisingly easy to settle back into our routines.

Us beginning our new life together in San Francisco!

Still I've avoided answering the question: what did it take?

• 322 days living on different continents, punctuated by just two trans-Atlantic visits
• A guesstimate of about 100 hours of video calls
• Adjusting to a nine hour time difference, meaning never being on the same wavelength when we did electronically connect
• Countless texts and photos shared, most especially of meals gone unshared
• 3 moves (on my end) into and within San Francisco
• About 500 pages of paperwork providing various US government agencies with every possible shrapnel of proof that we're legit
• Mad admin skills (+1 for the woman whose held non-tourist visas in 4 different countries and tourist visas in a handful more)
• Resilience
• Trust
• Patience (still not my strong point)
• Open communication

You'd think I'd have a better answer after a year to think about it, but that's what it took to bring Nicolas to America. Now a better question might be how this foreigner and I will adapt to life in a country that doesn't quite feel like home. But first we've got another adventure on the docket: Senegal. T-8 days.

A boozy reunion

I can't believe it's already been two whole weeks since I was out lounging around a hot tub, enjoying the fact that Sunday night meant nothing faced with a Monday (and even half of Tuesday!) off from work. I had the great fortune to have my old high school/middle school crew fly out from New York to meet those of us transplants now on the West Coast for a weekend of California wine tasting. It was about as kitsch as you can get, from a 14th-century-inspired castle winery to a winery accessible by air gondola, and we soaked it all in under fantastically sunny California skies. My SF friends weren't lying when they said that summer comes to San Francisco in October. The reunion was much overdue. It was really a remarkable gift, seeing that my old friends have all grown up into fantastic adults who you still just want to chill with. That they've welcomed me back into the fold so warmly after a decade abroad was more than I had hoped for. #blessed is just so trite, but if ever an occasion called for it... 

I'll leave this post short and sweet, and let the photos do the talking, with captions to help you along.

Day drinking *ahem* wine tasting around Napa/Sonoma

Our Airbnb in Sebastopol (Sonoma), complete with a hot tub for day drinking. We're grown ups now, so this is allowed. ;)


Wine tasting survivors photo

Out and about along the California coast

Our green card red letter days

Getting through a green card application is a special kind of administrative hell. I was going to tell you that the worst of it is the waiting and the wondering, but let's be clear, every stage is awful. From insisting your marriage certificate is real even if the scanner rotated the document by 90 degrees, to hunting down, assembling, and labelling every last bad photo you ever had as a couple, to prepping for an interview by quizzing each other about random relationship facts and figures that most normal couples are allowed to forget, it's all demeaning and degrading, as though my government were punishing me for marrying outside the tribe.

Yesterday, the waiting and wondering closed up when Nicolas opened an envelope. Finally, here is the (photoshopped) fruit of this year's labor:

In case it can help anyone who's still in the dark, or just as a testament to the journey we've taken, here is the run down of our green card red letter days:

mid-December 2017: We begin assembling documents for the I-130 petition submission.

February 3, 2018: Completed I-130 Petition for Alien Relative is prepared, lovingly assembled, and mailed off to the USCIS Texas Service Center, which processes applications from petitioners living in the western half of the US.

February 6, 2018: The Texas Service Center receives our application. (This was our "priority date.")

February 10, 2018: The Texas Service Center notifies us of our application's receipt.

March 22, 2018: We file a K-3 visa application (I-129F) which would enable Nicolas to move to the US while waiting for a response on his CR1 visa (green card for immediate relative of US citizen)

May 21, 2018: Our I-130 petition is approved! On this date, our K-3 visa application is rejected, as is unfortunately standard practice these days. The application was not evaluated while his I-130 was being processed. Once the I-130 was approved, he was no longer eligible for the K-3. With that decision, he officially had to keep waiting outside of the US for the remainder of the green card application process.

July 16, 2018: Our application is assigned a case number with the National Visa Center. We pay the fees immediately and begin assembling documents (and feel like fools for not having anticipated these documents and assembled them ahead of time).

August 7, 2018: We file our documents with the National Visa Center.

August 16, 2018: The National Visa Center notifies us that two of our documents have been rejected and require resubmission.

August 30, 2018: We submit a second filing of documents with the National Visa Center.

September 12, 2018: The National Visa Center approves our documents.

September 26, 2018: The US Embassy in France receives our application and assigns Nicolas an interview date: October 3!

October 3, 2018: Nicolas interviews at the embassy and his visa application is approved!

October 17, 2018: Nicolas's passport, which was taken at the end of his interview, is returned to him with a visa!!

Still to come...

November 30, 2018: Nicolas flies direct from Paris CDG to San Francisco SFO

Several weeks later... Nicolas's green card and social security card will arrive in the mail at our home. Can you believe it, ours? I just can't wait for us to start calling the same place home again.

A better countdown

The last few pieces of our immigration puzzle fell into place so fast that we hardly had time to build up any anticipation. It was mostly a mad dash of vaccinations, doctor's visits, and medical exams, all of which fell on Nicolas's shoulders. I frantically and rather unhelpfully tried to provide any last minute support that I could from nine time zones away. On Tuesday night, as I got ready for bed, Nicolas dressed to impress. As I tucked myself in, he headed off to the embassy. And as I slept fretfully, he whiled away hours waiting for his turn to get called to the counter for an interview. By the time I'd awoken, after hardly a handful of questions, Nicolas's green card visa application was approved. And then life went on.

This didn't seem right. After months of agony, anxiety, and frustration, how could we just be going about our normal routines? How were we not running to airports and catching the next flights to be together? And how has Nicolas still not had "the talk" with his boss? 

I've struggled to process that, while it's what we've wanted and waited for, the next stage isn't easy either. Nicolas now has to wrap up the life he's rebuilt back in Paris. There are goodbyes to be said and loose ends to be tied. And this time he won't just be hopping in a car and driving around the EU to be with me. While I wanted nothing more than to book Nicolas's flight for the day that his passport gets returned to him in the mail, I had to accept that November 30 was close enough. So now, here's the best countdown we've had since our year of countdowns began:

Notice regarding your Immigrant Visa Case becoming Documentarily Qualified

After an antsy morning spent repeatedly signing into my CEAC (Consular Electronic Application Center) account and attempting to call a dead NVC (National Visa Center) phone number, my frustrations went up in a puff of smoke when this little email popped up in my inbox:

After two rounds of NVC document submission thanks to our mistaken submissions of 1. a rotated document and 2. the wrong type of document from the UK Criminal Records office (who knew there were multiple ways for one office to report a clean slate?), we have now made it past the NVC. For those keeping track, that's USCIS: check, NVC: check. On to the US Embassy!

Seventeen years later

San Francisco remembers. 😢🇺🇸💔

Rancho Corral de Tierra

When getting to know a place, it's best to explore it for what it has to offer. So, while I may be a bit of a history nerd, in a place where the recorded timeline only spans the last few centuries, you can bet that's not its main attraction. Now that I'm back in the States, it's high time to embrace a bit more of the natural world. While I've been reticent to do too much exploring before Nicolas is able to join me, I'm always happy to jump on board when someone extends the invitation. This past weekend, I had the pleasure of exploring the Rancho Corral de Tierra with a sorority sister and her beau. The mist-laden hike was secluded and gave us some breath-taking views in the moments when we were able to see beyond the clouds. Feast your eyes on our Saturday afternoon.

Views from our hike in Rancho Corral de Tierra