Reunited...

On November 21st, after 6 weeks apart, we bibs were finally reunited together!  Bib's visa finally came through (much sooner than we thought), and he got on a plane as quickly as he could to join me in NYC.  (see the end of the blog post for more details on this visa)***

It's unnatural for soul mates to be separated, regardless of the circumstances, so it was such a great relief to be together again!  I didn't want to be super cheesy and come to the airport with balloons, so instead, I flooded the ceiling of our rented apartment with them.  We stayed in a cute little studio apartment in LIC, found on airbnb, and got a sense of what could potentially be our future neighborhood.  We walked along the river, had breakfast at a diner, and did all sorts of New York-y things.  I baked his favorite cookies and got all his favorite snacks to greet him in his new home.

It turned out that dear friends from Egypt and France were in town the weekend he arrived, so we were all able to meet for brunch!

having fun with reha before bib arrived!

Met with a whole new kind of extremely cold weather, we headed straight to the mall to buy bib his very first winter coat, hat, gloves and scarf!  Within his first week, the day before Thanksgiving, it snowed, and bib got to experience snow for the first time in his life!

You can guess what I was thankful for, this Thanksgiving.  Although it was so different and bittersweet to celebrate Thanksgiving without our close group of friends in Cairo, it was so nice to celebrate it together, and with my parents.  Here's to our new life in Amreeka.


***13 months after we began the paperwork for bib's visa, he received his I-130 immigration visa and was able to come live in the states.  It's a long, detailed, and intimidating process that documents every tiny aspect of our lives on paper, and considering the fact that we filed everything from Cairo, it was difficult.  I can't even count how many trips were taken to various government offices, translation offices, the US Embassy, the banks, the post office… you name it.  But although some people suggest using an immigration lawyer, we didn't find that it was necessary in our case.  There was one little screw-up on my part that caused a 60-day delay.  But otherwise, we were able to provide all the documents ourselves.  Days before I was scheduled to leave Cairo, we learned that his application was accepted and being forwarded to the US Embassy in Cairo, where they would schedule his interview and process the visa.  Great!  Except, days later, once I was already back in the states, I learned from an NVC representative that sometimes it takes the US Embassy 5 months to even schedule the interview.  Especially now, with many of the embassies in the Middle East shutting down- everyone was being routed through Cairo, so the US Embassy was backed up and jam packed with appointments.  Panic definitely set in.  We knew that there was no chance of having an October date, so we crossed our fingers for November- but knew it was a long shot, based on that information.  I started writing Congressmen, Senators, and was even thinking of returning to Egypt if it meant we would be apart for 5 months!  (My Congressman did respond to me and did contact the Embassy, but it was too soon for any strings to be pulled).  But by some miracle, when I called the NVC that first week of October to check on our status, we learned that he had been scheduled for the very first date in November.  November 3rd at 7:30am.  I'll never forget the feeling when he called me at 3am (E.T.) to let me know he got the visa.  All I said to him was, "Oh my god, I'm going to go throw up. I'll call you back."  And my mom, having overheard this, burst into the room, afraid it was bad news!

When he arrived, they stamped his passport with a temporary immigration visa, and within weeks, he received his green card and social security card in the mail.  The information online is very confusing and limited, but we were so careful and detailed that it all worked out in the end.  It's a very tense process to go through, and I feel for all the mixed/immigrant families out there who go through this too.