Landed!

I spent a very hectic week and a half in Westmoreland with my mother and was able to see my brothers and Grandmother as well.  It was worth all the running about just to say I was there and able to see them.

Yesterday was the all-important day, the day I landed in Canada as a permanent resident.  After a harrowing landing from what had started as a routine international flight, followed by an involuntary 2-hour confinement on the tarmac in the plane while the airport recovered from the thunderstorms that so terrified me during the landing, I was finally able to enter the airport and process through the various final steps to becoming a permanent resident (PR).

First, the Canadian Border Services Agency examined my declaration card that I was required to fill out on the flight, and directed me to Immigration.  Immigration went as expected, and perhaps even more smoothly than it would normally, as I was already so familiar with the requirements of the Act that the officer was relieved of the need to make any explanations, needing only to certify my various documents and then send me on to the next stage.

Stage 3 was declaring my accompanying and to-follow goods and property, and again, preparation made that a smooth process.  I had already prepared the necessary forms, so all the Customs officer needed to do was certify them after double-checking they were correctly and completely prepared.

Stage 4 was running to catch my next flight, which was delayed and delayed again until the two hours spent sitting on the tarmac were fully lost and never made up.  I arrived in Sudbury at 2:30 a.m. when it should have been midnight, and we were home in Elliot Lake two hours later.

Today has been about settling into the house, getting used to the location of things and re-establishing routines we used to have, such as my doing the dishes after meals because G is the cook.  The comfort of these routines  will ease me into accepting my new surroundings, and I look forward to each as they come back to us.

PPR!!

O.M.G.  The all-important passport request (PPR) call has finally come.  It lasted less than a minute, and that was all it took to turn my head upside down.  The crossroads I have been journeying towards is now in sight!

So, I take my passport in Tuesday, and I wait for the call to return to collect it.  My plans for going home to my husband before our second anniversary are very probable now, they are no longer just a possibility.

I have so much to organize and plan.  First, though, a celebration.  Getting this far required a lot of learning, a lot of hard work and expense, and no small amount of patience and I think I shall congratulate myself a little.  Insofar as I have mostly resisted the urge to whine or complain, insofar as I have spent the time waiting fruitfully, I believe it is OK to congratulate myself that much and to celebrate. *cheers*

As of yesterday morning, all the documents I was requested to submit have been handed over to the Canadian embassy.

My second medical exam was done by the same doctor who did the first.  A mostly painless and highly efficient process; I really do like this doctor.  The pain was from the required blood tests, and of course I had to psych myself up for that.  I almost passed out when she labeled two vials, I had forgotten they took quite that much blood!  After the obligatory BP test and physical once-over, he pronounced himself satisfied and I went to get the X-ray done.  That involved some waiting, but that was because a trauma victim came in at the same time and had to be seen to.

Earlier in the morning I went to get my fingerprints done.  On Monday I had quite the drama with the taxi driver I hired to take me to the tax office to make the payment for this.  He mis-heard my address and kept me waiting for 20 minutes before he mis-heard where I wanted to go and wasted another 10 minutes of my time going in the wrong direction.  I was not pleased.  This was somewhat mitigated by the lack of drama with making the payment, the cashier was only interested in my taxpayer registration number and the fees.

Going to get the fingerprints done was less dramatic.  I went fully prepared for the long wait and found myself surprised to be the 43rd person in line at 8:00 a.m.  A year ago at the same time I was 163rd in line.  The mystery was solved when I learned they had opened 3 other fingerprinting centres across the island, thereby eliminating the necessity of everyone needing a police report coming into Kingston.

I made myself comfortable for the wait with a book, and just moved through the musical chair process in a very Zen state.  There actually were a few people I engaged in conversation and enjoyed it, but for the most part I was entertained by Dean Koontz.  The tech was actually polite and well-mannered this time, and male, as opposed to the surly female I had last time.  Perhaps she has been moved to one of the other locations.

I waited out the week (5 business days) for the police report to be ready, then went to collect it.  That involved some drama, but I am so glad this whole process is over with insofar as dealing with Jamaican authorities are, that I won't even repeat any of it here.

I bought an envelope, labelled it neatly in block letters with our names and file number and enclosed the police report along with a letter explaining why I should be exempted from providing a new FBI report, accompanied by neatly labeled and referenced copies of my passport pages.  On my way to work, I looped up to the embassy, instead of passing below it, and dropped the window off at the heavily blacked out drop off window.  Very odd experience, talking to someone you cannot see who is right in front of you.  

Next step: wait for the embassy to call and request my passport, the all-important PPR (passport request).  I am hoping to hear back in about two weeks' time, on the assumption that the medical results can be received and processed in 3 weeks.   In the meanwhile, time to start making lists of all that I need to do!

Do over

Well, I hadn't quite expected to be writing this post quite so soon after getting that "in process" update, but in the mailbox today was a grayish envelope with "Canada" and the little maple leaf motif on it, and inside were documents requesting I do my medical examination and police record (again).  I am honestly astonished.  The letters are dated Feb 21, and the in process update says they began processing the information on Feb 20.  The envelope is post-marked Feb 22, and sometime between yesterday and today it arrived in my mailbox.  Wow.

Of course, all this marvelous efficiency is not without its faults.  They addressed the letters to me as Mrs. (insert maiden name).  This, after I sent them a copy of my new passport with my assumed married name and after I completed a new personal information form with said new last name and sent to them, 6 and 3 months ago respectively.  Really?

I am going to hope that the Tax Department does not get pissy with me when I go to pay for my fingerprints to be done, given that the forms are issued to Mrs. (insert maiden name) and I am Mrs. (insert married name) nee (insert maiden name) on my ID and taxpayer registration.  Just in case, I have decided to take along my marriage certificate and the passport with my former name to show to them, so they don't give me a hard time.  Caught between the ridiculousness of two bureaucracies!

So, now I need to book an appointment to see the doctor, I need to get time off from work to deal with the police certificate and said medical, and I need to prove I have not been to the US since 2010, in order not to have to go through the rigmarole of getting another FBI certificate.

Suddenly it dawns on me, now that events have started moving, that soon I will be moving my whole life.  I just posted something on FB referring to us as being at the end, and my perceptive hubby posted that we are actually nearing the beginning.  A new beginning is coming, and it's no longer on the horizon, it is in port and coming in to dock.  Wow, I've got a lot to do!

12 weeks to the beginning of June...I need to have myself set to leave by then, that's my timeline.

"In Process"

Last night, sometime around the time I would be getting ready for bed on a Friday night, an email came into my mailbox from the eCAS (electronic client application status) tracker: It appears your application has been updated.

I am certain I couldn't click that email to open it fast enough.  Sure enough, it was the long-awaited "In Process" email, which announced that they received my application on May 19, 2011 (yes, we know!) and began processing said application on February 20, 2012.  Nine months to the day, CHC-Kingston got off their hands and began processing my application.  Hallelujah.

From here on out, the actual processing should go much faster than the sitting around.  Background check, criminality and security checks, and the medical check.  The last one is where I will be held up, as I no longer have a valid medical and cannot be issued a visa without one.

I have decided to wait for the embassy to issue the form requesting that I re-do my medical exam, although I do not strictly have to wait.  It's just that, at this stage, attempts to be pro-active may be counter-productive as some over-zealous and not very well-informed embassy staffer might feel that I should have waited, and proceed to waste my time and money by demanding I use the form issued to me and not accepting the results of the medical I initiated myself.  Nowhere in the Regulations, the Act, or the Operating Manual does it say I have to wait, but some people like to assert their one single iota of authority by insisting on not accepting results of a medical they did not order themselves.

Week before last was such a rough week.  I was greatly upset by the news that a friend had received an in process update.  Naturally, she had applied to sponsor her husband, and having done so in August 2011 (6 months after we filed, 3 months after CHC-Kingston received our file), her husband had gotten his in process update on February 12th, four months after his file was received.  I was stunned.  Here I had sat all this time, and with this kind of time lapse between our applications, and her husband's application was being processed before mine?  The arbitrariness and unfairness of the process hit me especially hard, and I could not be as happy for them as I wanted to be.  I did a lot of exercise in order to burn off the feelings of anger and depression.

To restore my equilibrium, I felt it was necessary to do something more.  So I decided to spring clean.  Yes, a month early.  I pulled out bags and bags of old papers I had been "hoarding" since I came to Kingston to live, and went through a suitcase full of clothing and found that only six pieces in it could still fit or be given away because everything else was hopelessly tight, or too dated.  I cleaned and I threw away things until the apartment felt lighter, and so did I.  I did suffer some mild discomfort at discarding these things, I do not like to throw things away I feel might be useful, but they needed to go.  As things stand now, I won't need to deal with these things when it comes time to make the big move.

And now, it's finally time to accept that I ought to be in a leaving frame of mind, and I need not suppress or question it.  I am hopeful that the embassy does not insist on mailing me my medical request when I live less than a kilometre (less than ten minutes' walk) from the embassy.  I would much prefer to go there and collect it, than to have it take two weeks to go through the mail in the circuitous manner of Jamaica Post.  Efficiency and common-sense are not, however, their bywords.

I am hopeful that everything left to be done will happen in good time, though.  I did not get my wish of a winter arrival, so I am hopeful that spring will not pass before we are together again.