Monday
It's REALLY not easy to get into the U.S.!
Kristian's application for a tourist visa was denied....we aren't sure why. They guy at his embassy interview just said he had to apply for a marriage visa. Evidently, if you're a foreigner married to an American, you can basically forget about visiting your spouse's country. You've got to either move there or just be happy parking your butt in your poverty-stricken former-communist homeland!
Well, that's our Christmas plans down the drain, plus the $140 visa application fee and the 300-euro cancellation fee for our plane tickets. In true American fashion, I consoled myself and my husband by going to the mall and buying him some pants.
On the plus side, when I contacted the embassy about his immigrant visa, I discovered that the process is
highly streamlined for us because we can apply at the embassy instead of USCIS. The woman at the embassy seemed to think that Kristian's visa would be approved by this summer--far better than the 18 months to two years my book about marriage visas had led me to believe. Applying at the embassy bypasses a lot of mail and a lot of bureaucracy: my initial petition for his application will be hand-delivered to the embassy and approved that same day instead of being mailed to USCIS and languishing there for up to a year.
Well, that's our Christmas plans down the drain, plus the $140 visa application fee and the 300-euro cancellation fee for our plane tickets. In true American fashion, I consoled myself and my husband by going to the mall and buying him some pants.
On the plus side, when I contacted the embassy about his immigrant visa, I discovered that the process is
highly streamlined for us because we can apply at the embassy instead of USCIS. The woman at the embassy seemed to think that Kristian's visa would be approved by this summer--far better than the 18 months to two years my book about marriage visas had led me to believe. Applying at the embassy bypasses a lot of mail and a lot of bureaucracy: my initial petition for his application will be hand-delivered to the embassy and approved that same day instead of being mailed to USCIS and languishing there for up to a year.
Friday
It is not easy to get into the USA
My job situation is plodding along nicely--I'm working as an adjunct for two online schools now, so even if one school reduced my course load, we'd still be able to make ends meet. So, we decided to take the plunge and plan to return to Texas for Christmas. My grandparents are getting very old, and if Kristian is ever going to meet them, it's probably unwise to wait until after his immigration paperwork goes through (we haven't actually done more than gather papers for that process: he won't be allowed to enter the US at all while it's being processed, and we wanted him to make one visit before we started with immigration).
Many people don't know this, but the US requires people from many countries to get an actual visa just to visit the country. We Americans can enter almost any country in the world on the strength of our passports: I could actually go LIVE in Serbia--for example--indefinitely with only my passport. Croatians are not so lucky. They need a visa just to visit the States.
So, we put in his application--it's online, but it's long. One amusing question asked if the applicant intends to enter the country as part of a terrorist organization. I'd like to know if anyone ever clicks "Yes."
Then we scheduled an appointment for him to interview at the embassy. Then we gathered paperwork: a letter from his boss, mainly, and a form from my parents promising to pay for his support while he's in the country. We have to go to the bank today to pay the $140 application fee (yes, that's right: more than it costs to apply to Stanford's PhD program). Then, on Tuesday, we travel to Zagreb and he goes in for the interview. I hope all goes well. He dreams of firing guns and visiting the Nike outlet and Red Lobster...I just want the experience of being with my husband in my home country. That is a weird thing to realize: my spouse has never set foot in my homeland.
Many people don't know this, but the US requires people from many countries to get an actual visa just to visit the country. We Americans can enter almost any country in the world on the strength of our passports: I could actually go LIVE in Serbia--for example--indefinitely with only my passport. Croatians are not so lucky. They need a visa just to visit the States.
So, we put in his application--it's online, but it's long. One amusing question asked if the applicant intends to enter the country as part of a terrorist organization. I'd like to know if anyone ever clicks "Yes."
Then we scheduled an appointment for him to interview at the embassy. Then we gathered paperwork: a letter from his boss, mainly, and a form from my parents promising to pay for his support while he's in the country. We have to go to the bank today to pay the $140 application fee (yes, that's right: more than it costs to apply to Stanford's PhD program). Then, on Tuesday, we travel to Zagreb and he goes in for the interview. I hope all goes well. He dreams of firing guns and visiting the Nike outlet and Red Lobster...I just want the experience of being with my husband in my home country. That is a weird thing to realize: my spouse has never set foot in my homeland.
Wednesday
Green onions: who knew?
A few weeks ago, I read in the clueless cook's handbook about something interesting you can do with green onions after you've chopped up the green parts: replant the bulbs and watch them grow! I've had trouble finding good green onions in the stores here. If I can find them, they're often brown and wilted, so I jumped at the prospect of a continual harvest of green onions. I stuck the bulbs down in a pot, gave them a little water, and went to Osijek for the weekend with Kristian. When we got back, here's what I had:
I think tonight, it's time for a stir-fry!
Pretty cool, huh? Three or four weeks later, they've grown into this:
Saturday
What I've been reading
One of the great things about being a homemaker/online-education drone is that I have tons of time to read. I wish we had a good bookstore handy, but--and I apologize in advance to the Luddites--but my Kindle is a thing of beauty. You can get so many books for free! I do prefer reading the old-school paper-based kind, if I have the choice, but the other day I came across a reference to a novel called Lady Into Fox that I had never heard of. Allegedly, that novel had sparked the 1920's subgenre of "fantastic" novels like Harriet Hume, Lolly Willows, and Orlando. Anyway, I just went online to Amazon, found Lady Into Fox for Kindle--for free--and nabbed it. Of course, there are about 30 other unread books on my Kindle, but at least I'm well-prepared for the next tedious train ride!
Anyway, here's what I've read in the past few weeks since getting back from our honeymoon:
Anyway, here's what I've read in the past few weeks since getting back from our honeymoon:
The Lake by George Moore
The most remarkable aspect of this book--to me-- is its sense of place. The scenery, weather, and people of County Mayo are so vivid and visual. If this book had been written by a woman, it would be called "regionalist." As it is, it's called a tour de force.
The Fountain Overflows and This Real Night Rebecca West
These are the first two novels in a semi-autobiographical trilogy about the lives of the four Aubrey children in fin de siecle, Edwardian and WWI England. The first book was the only one published during West's lifetime: the second book doesn't come across as a draft, but allegedly the third is only eight chapters and an outline. I don't know what this trilogy is about, exactly, but its exploration of the family dynamic from the perspective of a creative child-then-famous-concert pianist is fascinating. This is one clever family whose dinner party you WOULD NOT MISS, e.g., the narrator's description of her older sister's behavior the morning after she confessed to being engaged: "She was still meek, but her meekness was pretentious. Though she was a lamb, it was one which had got itself embroidered on a church banner."
The Monk Matthew Lewis
Possibly THE 18th century gothic novel, The Monk is about a wicked monk, incest, sorcery, ghosts, murder, sepulchers, portents, the Inquisition....you get the picture. It's a ludicrous good time.
Drama in Muslin George Moore
Drama in Muslin is a comic send-up of the 19th-century Dublin marriage market. It's insightful and funny, and the characters are almost Austenian. But it was the fourth book by Moore I read this summer, and you know, I don't think I like George Moore. He's just OH such a man of the world and so kindly condescending to notice lowly females and the deluded religious.
A Doll’s House Ibsen
I reread this play after I read Moore's critique of it in his introduction to Drama in Muslin, and I'll be darned if that bastard isn't right: Nora's sudden transformation just strains one's credulity too far.
I reread this play after I read Moore's critique of it in his introduction to Drama in Muslin, and I'll be darned if that bastard isn't right: Nora's sudden transformation just strains one's credulity too far.
Kushiel’s Dart Jacqueline Carey
Look, every eight books or so I need a cheap fantasy novel. This one's set in an alternative Renaissance/medieval Europe and the main character is a polyglot of a courtesan (*snort snort*) who works as a spy for her guardian before being capture by Vikings, visiting the Welsh court...etc. This book's not bad...one of the more woman-friendly fantasy novels I've ever read.
Look, every eight books or so I need a cheap fantasy novel. This one's set in an alternative Renaissance/medieval Europe and the main character is a polyglot of a courtesan (*snort snort*) who works as a spy for her guardian before being capture by Vikings, visiting the Welsh court...etc. This book's not bad...one of the more woman-friendly fantasy novels I've ever read.
Harriet Hume Rebecca West
Why is West only on the margins of the canon? Harriet Hume is her foray into high modernism: it's one of those 1920's "fantastic" novels, and this one asserts the necessity of respectful exchange between the sexes by allowing the boundaries between one mind and another, this world and the next, fantasy and reality, to become fluid.
Why is West only on the margins of the canon? Harriet Hume is her foray into high modernism: it's one of those 1920's "fantastic" novels, and this one asserts the necessity of respectful exchange between the sexes by allowing the boundaries between one mind and another, this world and the next, fantasy and reality, to become fluid.
Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography Claire Harman
Warner's another female modernist that deserves a more central place in the canon, but I found this biography to be unsatisfactory. A literary biography is a strange beast: you can get an encyclopedia like Forster's Yeats: A Life; you can get a sort interpretive dance, like Lyndall Gordon's T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life; or you can get a rather dry chronology without any sense of a narrative arc, like this bio of Warner. "Sylvia did this, Sylvia wrote that. Then she died." Plus, there's a dearth of pictures in this book, which in my opinion is the death knell of a biography. Of course, it's not like you have any options: as far as I can tell, this is the only bio of Warner.
Warner's another female modernist that deserves a more central place in the canon, but I found this biography to be unsatisfactory. A literary biography is a strange beast: you can get an encyclopedia like Forster's Yeats: A Life; you can get a sort interpretive dance, like Lyndall Gordon's T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life; or you can get a rather dry chronology without any sense of a narrative arc, like this bio of Warner. "Sylvia did this, Sylvia wrote that. Then she died." Plus, there's a dearth of pictures in this book, which in my opinion is the death knell of a biography. Of course, it's not like you have any options: as far as I can tell, this is the only bio of Warner.
Thursday
The weather is beautiful for doing laundry
Comparitively few people here in Croatia have clothes dryers, instead, the normal thing is clotheslines and old-fashioned metal clothes-horses. I happen to love the smell of clean laundry off the line, sun-warmed and breeze -scented: who doesn't? Plus, using a clothes line instead of a dryer is economical and environmentally sound.
But there is one problem. In the summer, days when it's sunny and at least somewhat warm are not too rare, even in this Central European, sub-alpine climate we have here in northern Croatia. In the winter, we have these nice steam-heated radiators before which to position the clothes-horse. But autumn weather here is not conducive to laundry-drying...at ALL. It's rainy and cool...high temperatures in the 70's IF we're lucky! It's too warm to turn the heat on and too cold to dry the clothes outside, and a few weeks ago when I tried to dry clothes inside on the horse, they didn't dry for two days and got a gross musty smell in the meantime, so I had to wash them again anyway. No kidding, I don't think we've had more than three hours of sun in a row since we got back from the honeymoon a week and a half ago.
If anyone has any words of wisdom for how to dry clothes when it's chilly and damp, I'd like to hear! I keep telling myself that people didn't have electric drying machines for most of human history, and somehow women dried those enormous dresses. But at the moment I'm a bit stumped: I wash tiny loads of clothes so they don't crowd on the clothes-horse and get musty.
And, of course, my first reaction this morning when Kristian said, "it looks like it might clear up a bit today," was to rush inside and start a load of towels!
Wednesday
You say potato...
One of the things about Croatia that I love is the more relaxed attitude toward work. Kristian works 30-hour weeks, and that's considered full-time. People take long breaks for coffee. It's probably written in the Croatian constitution that everyone gets at least week at the seaside every year. Of course, salaries are small and people are poor. But working AS MANY HOURS AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN is not the cultural virtue that it is in the U.S. People here like to slow down and spend time with friends and family. If you "drop in" to a Croatian's house, even if she's a stranger and you're making a business call, she will drop whatever she's doing to make coffee and serve cookies...and you better not say you aren't hungry or thirsty!!
Of course, this easy-going, relaxed attitude is very annoying when you want something done. We have been without internet at home for two weeks. The tenant before us had the same kind of internet, and a guy came out to set up the modem and router. But at the main office, they can't be bothered to switch on our service. All they have to do is TURN ON THE DSL. It's guaranteed to be on within 30 days of us requesting service. Thirty days!! To make matters worse, they don't quit sending you a bill, whether or not you actually have internet. So we could be billed for a whole month of internet service that they didn't give us.
Since Kristian does freelance web design on the side, and I teach online, we both require internet for our jobs, and it's really a hardship not to have it. Croatia isn't like the US in that there's free wireless at every coffee shop, gas station, and fast food joint. There are a couple coffee shops in town that MIGHT have internet, but it's down as often as not.
Oh well, the 30 days will be up by the time we're back from the sea--we're leaving tomorrow--so at least the annoyance is almost over. But I was just thinking today....it takes about 1 day of no-internet-at-home for me to quit thinking "Croatians have such a healthy, balanced attitude toward work" and start thinking, "Croatians are so damned lazy!!!!" :D
Of course, this easy-going, relaxed attitude is very annoying when you want something done. We have been without internet at home for two weeks. The tenant before us had the same kind of internet, and a guy came out to set up the modem and router. But at the main office, they can't be bothered to switch on our service. All they have to do is TURN ON THE DSL. It's guaranteed to be on within 30 days of us requesting service. Thirty days!! To make matters worse, they don't quit sending you a bill, whether or not you actually have internet. So we could be billed for a whole month of internet service that they didn't give us.
Since Kristian does freelance web design on the side, and I teach online, we both require internet for our jobs, and it's really a hardship not to have it. Croatia isn't like the US in that there's free wireless at every coffee shop, gas station, and fast food joint. There are a couple coffee shops in town that MIGHT have internet, but it's down as often as not.
Oh well, the 30 days will be up by the time we're back from the sea--we're leaving tomorrow--so at least the annoyance is almost over. But I was just thinking today....it takes about 1 day of no-internet-at-home for me to quit thinking "Croatians have such a healthy, balanced attitude toward work" and start thinking, "Croatians are so damned lazy!!!!" :D
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