How We Obtained the K1 Fiancee Visa: Part 1

I met hubby when I was living in Spain. We dated for six months and a few months before I went home for the summer, we started talking about getting married. We decided to do it in Madrid because his family was already there, and it’s easier for my American family to travel to Spain than it is for his Bolivian family to get visas to enter the US.

The more we researched, the more we realized that a K1 Fiancee visa was a much better option than a K3, or nonimmigrant visa. Here’s the main differences:

K1 (Fiancee):

•     This is when an American citizen marries a non-American citizen in the United States, but the fiancée cannot already be living in the United States
•     All paperwork must be filed and approved before the marriage takes place
•     Wait time (this was back in 2008) 6-12 months
•     Work permit within 90 days, temporary green card within a year

K3 (Nonimigrant):

•      This is when an American citizen marries a non-American citizen outside of the United States
•      All of the paperwork must be filed after the marriage takes place
•      Wait time (back in 2008) was 12-18 months until the visa is obtained, the spouse cannot move to the US
•      It also takes longer to get a work visa/permit and a green card

Once we decided on the K1 Visa, the first step was for me to file a petition. This was the part that confused us the most. I thought we were filling paperwork for hubby’s visa. Before that could happen, I needed to prove that as his fiancée, I was an American citizen and petition the government for permission for my fiancée to apply for a visa.

Sounds pretty easy, right? I’ve been a citizen my entire life. But along with a 6 page form, called the I-129F, I also needed proof of citizenship. Notarized birth certificate, social security card, background check, all sorts of stuff. Along with all of that, I needed to give evidence that my hubby and I were planning to get married. We were told a receipt for the engagement ring is usually what most people use.

The problem?

He hadn’t proposed yet.

What I didn’t know was that he’d ordered my ring from Bolivia, and because of blocks on packages in and out of the country, even though he ordered it in July, it didn’t arrive in Madrid until December.

We started the paperwork in August because we wanted the visa by that spring. Fortunately, I had my wedding dress because I wanted to get it while I was in the US for the summer. So we used the receipt for my dress and the reservation for our wedding.

Once we collected all of that info (which was difficult, considering I wasn’t in the country), we sent it in. We finished it all in September.

After that, we waited for several months.

Part 2 coming next week!

I Work in Skilled Nursing

I’m a nurse. I went to a prestigious school, and I studied international nursing in Madrid for two years. I have my bachelor’s degree, which means after my name, I have the letters RN, BSN.

I work also work in a nursing home.

For the majority of my nursing career, every time I mention work, most people assume I work in a hospital. Don’t get me wrong, hospitals are great, but that’s never been my ideal work environment. From a young age, I’ve wanted to work in geriatrics. Unfortunately, geriatrics has a very bad stigma associated with it, with old people and dying and the smells…

In my graduating class of almost 300, I think I was one of three or four total who wanted to work geriatrics. The majority always wanted to work in pediatrics.

And I think that’s very admirable. There are many pediatric positions available, and children who need to be cared for. I know I could never do it. The pediatric rotation of clinicals was one of the worst I’d ever endured, just because I don’t like being around kids who are sick. It breaks my heart.

I like geriatrics. They’re often neglected, because people think they’ve already lived their lives. Children don’t visit as often, they’re all busy with their own lives. In my mind, the elderly have lived long lives, and they need someone to share their stories with before they pass.

The other reason why I love nursing homes (more commonly known as skilled nursing) is because of the revolving door. When I did clinicals in the hospital, I would see a patient once, maybe twice. Then they would go home, or go to a skilled nursing, or a TCU to finish their care. I kept them alive, I took care of them for a day or two, but that was it. In skilled nursing, I see my patients every single day. I get to know them well enough that I can see when there’s a change. I can see if they’re eating less than normal, or if they’re more tired, more confused. I can see the subtle differences that can prevent something more serious.

I like having the same patients for more than two or three days. And I love being the person who gets to hear their stories, and make them feel loved at the end of their lives. It makes me feel like I’m doing more than just covering a wound. I’m healing.

Us Vs Them

A few weeks ago, my husband and I decided to get away and watch Zootopia. I’d been on the fence about the movie, mostly because I wasn’t too impressed with the commercials. It looked like it depended on humor that I don’t really enjoy, and the part with the sloths, since it was the majority of the commercial, made me want to tear my hair out. (Amazingly, it’s a lot funnier in the movie.) Add to that, I’m not a huge animal fan in the first place, so watching a whole movie about animals seemed like it might not be worth it.

Then I started to read some of the reviews, and they were all very positive. I was kind of shocked. Most of the reviews talked about the message of the movie, and how they did it well. I was curious enough to go see.

I’ve got to say, I was blown away. There’s going to be spoilers below, so if you haven’t seen it, don’t read! You have been warned.

I don’t know what message most people came away with, and the way it was written could be subject to interpretation by a whole number of people. For me, it was the message of the victim. The story seems to be about predators, about those people who used to, at one point, terrorize the prey. Even though it’s been centuries since it last happened, since they last hunted for fun, the prey still see them as the bad guys. The ones that could at any point, revert back to who they used to be.

But the second half of the movie, the message became clear. There’s the idea of the predator. Someone that they haven’t been for years. Yet, they’re still judged by the past. No matter what changes have been made, no matter what good they’ve caused, they still live under the judgement of their previous actions.

Because the movie is about animals, it’s up to interpretation as to who the predator and prey are. 

Most people think of racism, which makes sense, but at the same time, I don’t think it’s that clear cut. It’s the us vs them, no matter who the ‘us’ is and no matter who the ‘them’ is. It could be race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and even republican vs. democrat. I deal with it in the work place, the idea of hospital nurses vs nursing home nurses. Stereotypes of any kind are going to skew our views, whether they’re a positive or negative, it doesn’t matter. Not all Asian people are the same.  Not all women are the same. Not all sports fans are the same.

Get to know the actual person, and base your opinion off of them, not who you think they should be.

That's Interesting

Learning a new language is hard. At least, it is for me. I took 3 years of Spanish in high school, and when I realized I was going to study in Madrid, I began studying on my own. My Spanish teacher, originally from Peru, was awesome, and she tutored me during my free time. I figured that by the time I got to Madrid, I’d at least be able to communicate.

That was not the case.

My husband tells me that I had a very tell-tale sign for when I didn’t understand. My smile would get very big and I would nod over and over like I understood what was being said. 

Unfortunately, that happened a lot my first few months in Madrid.

I’m here to tell you that if you don’t understand, don’t just nod and say yes over and over. It’ll get you into trouble.

I accidentally agreed to giving someone piano lessons because I nodded and said yes at the same time. I agreed to play the piano for a funeral.

The worst moment was when I was waiting for my then-boyfriend to get out of a religion class. I sat out in the foyer, and someone else came and sat by me. I knew him a little bit, because of activities, and when he started talking, I started nodding. He talked for a long time, and I would respond with smiles, nods and “Si!” “Que Bien!” (Yes! That’s good!)

After he finished, and I gave another enthusiastic smile and nod, and narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. He spoke slowly and pronounced each word so I could understand.

“Entendiste lo que te dije?”

Did you understand what I said?

I realized I’d been caught and shook my head. No.

“Te estuve explicando de mi divorcio.”

I was telling you about my divorce.

The whole time he told me about his divorce, and the pain he went through, I was nodding and smiling and telling him, “That’s good!”

Here’s the moral of the story: If you’re ever traveling to a different country, and you’re not quite sure about the language, put on an interested face and tell them “That’s interesting.” Whether it’s good or it’s bad, it’s not going to get you in trouble. 

Living With the Disease: COPD

Over the past few years, I feel that I’ve had more and more patients with COPD. It may be because I’ve changed from more of a long term setting to a short-term rehab, but either way, I’m still amazed by how little people actually understand about the disease, the patients especially.

COPD stands for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, and its main cause is smoking. Obviously, smoking isn’t the only reason, it could be caused by air pollution, or infections, but the majority of patients are previous or current smokers. Because I’m a nurse, it’s important for me to educate my patient on how to take care of themselves. Unfortunately, for COPD, a lot of it is very counterintuitive. When someone’s dealing with symptoms of COPD, they feel like they can’t breathe. 

For anyone else, it would be obvious. Increase the oxygen levels, give them more oxygen so they can breathe easier.

For COPD patients, that can harm, rather than help.

Even knowing that, and with increased education, it’s hard to understand, and I can’t count the number of times I’ve found oxygen levels increased because patients or their families believe it will help them breathe. The problem with COPD isn’t that they aren’t taking in oxygen, it’s that they aren’t converting it to carbon dioxide. Their body doesn’t know what to do with so much oxygen, and it thinks that it has more than it needs, which means it doesn’t need to breathe as much.

It’s hard when there’s a disease that works against sense. Well-meaning family members and friends often try and increase the oxygen to help them breathe, and often patients themselves listen to their body, begging for more oxygen. But it’s not a lack that they have, it’s the inability to convert oxygen to carbon dioxide.

Why in Asia?

As many of you may know, I’ve been working on a new series. It’s been a long process in the making. I got the first inklings all the way back in April, when I gave myself a new challenge to try and create new characters every day of the month. It wasn’t easy or fun, but I was able to find two different characters that had the beginnings of a great story.

I hadn’t figured out very much before I went to the museum, to a special exhibit on pirates. Obviously, after that, I knew pirates had to be in my story, which meant it needed to be in a world with an ocean, or at least a sea. The names I’d randomly picked for these characters were Italian in descent, so I’d set it in the Mediterranean.

I plotted my story, but kept running into the same issue. It didn’t feel right. The plot wasn’t working. The characters didn’t feel natural. It was a very odd experience, especially since I usually had no issues with plotting. To be fair, usually, my stories weren’t this fragmented when I started out, but that didn’t mean it needed to be this hard.

It was about that time that I read an article on diversity in reading. It wasn’t the first one I’d ever read, and believe me, it won’t be the last. I think just yesterday, I might have read two or three.

I wish I’d saved the article, but it said something that really hit home. The author asked why all fantasy worlds seem to be set in medieval Europe. They mentioned that there were so many cultures at that time, in Africa, South America, Asia… it makes no sense for every story to be in the same world and within the same predominant culture.

When I read about diversity before, I always thought it wasn’t really up to me. This is a fantasy world, and fantasy, from my experience, and from everything I’d read, was in medieval Europe. It hadn’t even occurred to me that there could be diversity within fantasy as well. That I could create a world based off of a different culture.

The moment I decided to try an Asian world, the entire story fell into place. The culture fit the story in a way I couldn’t have imagined. Certain character aspects that didn’t make sense in Italy made total sense in Japan.

Diversity can be acknowledged in any situation, and in any world. There’s no reason why we can’t spread out, expand to other cultures and present the stories of other people. Don’t box yourself in. Explore. Experiment. Maybe your characters and story will benefit.

Living in the United States: Kenny

Living in a different country is hard. Not being part of the normal, even if you're from that country, is hard too. There are so many people who deal with prejudices and stereotypes every day, and sometimes, all they want is someone to understand them. This is a new series on my blog, called Living in the United States, where I talk to people about what it's like to be in the minority.

Today, our first interviewee is Kenny, my wonderful hubby who was willing to be my guinea pig.

Let’s start out with, where are you from?

Hi people, this is Kenny. I’m from Santa Cruz, Bolivia

How long have you been in the United States?

Well, let me tell you. I’m been in the United States for about, close to be 7 years.

What brought you to the United States?

A gringuita.

What did you think it would be like, living here?

I don’t know. You see something in the TVs and you see big houses and stuff, but nothing appeared to my imagination.

Do you feel different when you’re around a whole bunch of Americans?

Do you think so? I have a dark colored skin, so that’s something, right?

Do you think they treat you differently?

Yeah, of course. There are some things I don’t understand. It depends on the person, actually.

What do you miss most about your country?

Just the food.

What’s your favorite Bolivian Food?

Salteñas, because I can get it here.

What do you wish people from the US knew about Bolivians or your country?

I’m not Mexican, so they need to figure out that all the south is not Mexico.

Do you think you’re treated like a Mexican, or that people think you know everything about Mexico?

Both. Because I look different, and people assume I’m from Mexico, but it’s not true. Some people get offended when you assume, there are a lot of countries that are not Mexico.

Do you feel like you make more friends with Americans or Non-Americans?

You need to notice that you usually get along with people that are the same as you. So in my case, I go for the Latinos, or people who are not from the US, because it’s easy to get along, I guess, because someone is from different country, I understand you better, how to be an immigrant here, and you will share some experiences.

Do you feel like Americans don’t understand you?

They don’t need to understand me, I mean, if they’re Americans, they’re in a bubble, usually, and sometimes you need to burst the bubble to get into the environment, otherwise they won’t’ care about you.

Do you think you have burst the bubble?

For so many people, yes, but that’s… for Americans, you have a conversation with someone, and they’re not even polite. Someone comes, and they don’t introduce, they start talking to you, and then the person they were talking to before is by themselves.

What did you find most unusual about living in the United States?

One is that they don’t introduce friends to other friends. Because, when someone comes that I know, I introduce to the other one, and I make a big circle so everyone knows to each other. But here, they have a bubble, and this is my bubble, and you don’t touch my bubble. This is my personal space, and you cannot be like this, very close, and breathe on my neck.

What do you like about Americans?

They are givers. That’s how they are. If you notice, in the internet everywhere, if something happens, and someone does a collections, everyone runs to help that person, it doesn’t matter what color they are, you can have help even if you’re a stranger.

Is there any advice you would give to Americans if they’re interacting with someone from a different culture?

Be patient when they’re talking, because so many people struggle with talking. If you’re not interested, go away. It’s true. Sometimes, you try to talk, when your English is not good enough, but if you’re not interested why are you wasting your time?

Is there anything else you want to say?

Thank you people.