End of the road

[Pineau]

I have been using shutterfly for the past year. I began using it as just a place to store photos so they wouldnt get lost. But they have a lot of features for building websites and photo albums for groups. And its all free as long as you buy one product a year from them.
Check this out.
https://fionafeifei.shutterfly.com/

[kenny]

Enjoy looking through your pictures. I look forward to going back to Shenyang someday and visit Linda's family. I think I look forward to going more than her or Ziwei. 

I will say that the pic of your wife standing on the arm's of the wood chair in front of the window made me quiver a little bit. These women are fearless!

[Pineau]

HaHa! I don't know if she is fearless or just stupid. She does things like that. She reaches for a  power tools I am using (while they are still rotating)  to show me she can do it better and crazy stuff like that. She takes a lot of chances. I don't know how she has survived this long without serious injury.

Thanks for the compliments on the photos. I really like that website and I am liking it more as I learnt how to use it. You can create albums and showcase them as a website and include links to other albums. Add a blog and comments section. Its great for photo sharing with the family and like I said its is free if you purchase a photo book or some other product every year.

Speaking of going back to China. I never thought I would say this but I sort of miss it. The noise, the people, the smell of food cooking by the sidewalk vendors.  All sorts of things come to mind. Especially the friends I made in Guangzhou.  I may  take a trip just to get it out of my system. I know after a month there I will be anxious to come back home. 

My son has taken a liking to southern China. He has been going back to Shenzhen about once every couple of months. Stays a couple of weeks then comes back home. So far it has been all work and no socializing ( or very little). I am going to laugh at him after some Shenzhen beauty takes his breath away and he cant wait to to go back to see her again.  Like father like son I guess. 

[kenny]

My wife is the same way, she will watch me do something or let me show her how and within an hour she is an expert and is telling me a better way to do it. She worked on the farm when she was younger but it is done different here, and she just wont let it sink in, but she has a large flower garden and works in it everyday and keeps it looking so pretty.

I do look forward to a trip back to China but not sure how we can work it in with the work here and Ziwei school. We go to a chinese buffet couple times a month in a town 20 mile north and she has become very good friends with the owner's and girls that work there. They mentioned taking a bus trip to China town in New York. You ever been there? I dont think I would like to drive to New York City and try to get around (patience thing again) but I have never been on a bus trip either, hell just a few years ago I had never been anywhere now I talk about going back to China. I just wander what a trip like that would be like, it would probably cost about as much but would be eaiser to work in right now. What do you think or has anybody else been there?

I would like to do something to get Linda away for a few days, if I could get her talked into it, I think she is as much of a homebody as I am. It is just something I have thought about the last year or so. We attended a Chinese festival in indianapolis last fall but it was so small that she doesnt think she wants to go this year. I was just curious about your thoughts or anybody else's.

I was also curious about what kind of work your son does to travel to China so much? I think you are right though, sooner or later he will he will fall for a china beauty, how could he not? (god help him)

[Pineau]

I absolutely have been to China town in New your city.  We did a one week speed site-seeing tour Just about a month ago.  Where are you. If your taking a long trip you might as well stay the night and see the stature of liberty.

My wife and i went to New York to meet up with Irishman and my old friend Lisa from Shunde.  I swear there is a small town where we me up with another of Fiona's classmates the look amazing like Guangzhou. It's  freaky, one minute your in New York city traffic and the next you think your in China. Its called Flushing. About 5 miles east of LaGuardia airport. If you get a chance go out to eat there.

[Pineau]

Kenny,
remember when I said I don't know if she is fearless or just stupid. 
well tonight I figured that one out.
Here is the short version. She comes home with and empty tank of gas and says I need to teach her how to put gas in her car.
So off to the gas station.  Ok
1. pull along side the pump.
2. Remove gas cap and put it somewhere safe so not to forget it.
3. Scan your rewards card for discounts.
4. Select pay outside and scan credit card.
5. Remove nozzle, place in car and pull the trigger wait for it to click off.
She did all that remarkably well.
6. So when the pump clicks off and it's time to return the nozzle to pump, were standing there and she has the pump nozzle in her hand and its pointed straight at my chest.  And I am talking to her about what to do next.  I don't know if it was a stray gamma ray hit her in the head or just a random thought that asked " I wonder what happens if you pull the trigger when the nozzle is not in the car?" . But 3 seconds later I am drenched in gasoline and ready to pass out from the fumes that engulfed me.  Then I think,, oh my god! fumes! Any minute I am going to become a blazing inferno with legs.

I scream at her get in the car! Drove home well above the speed limit, Stripped naked, ran upstairs and jumped into the shower. All is well now but I should carry a spare pacemaker in the glove box.

now I am betting it must have been a stray gamma ray, because to have a random thought implies that you have a brain and I am sure she left it in China. 
 Sigh...
 

[Willy The Londoner]

O M G She could have lit up your life for evermore, literally.

Any spark from the car could have had dire consequences.

We are certainly pleased to see that you could write about it.

Willy

[kenny]

hahaha  I just read your story and then read it to Linda and we both laughed to tears.

It is funny but I have been doing this same thing here, teaching her and Ziwei how to fill their tank. I will remember to stand way back from now on.

It is good you are ok, thank god you arent a smoker.

[JohnB]

Gerry,
think of it this way..
it could have been a very abrupt ending to your highly successful 'end of the road' thread.

so I am happy for you that your health is fine, at least your physical being.

[Pineau]

I am suffering from amnesia.

Today a reminder popped up on my calendar. It simply said file for adjustment of status and nothing more.
Fiona has a 10 year green card so I cant imagine why I would  put that reminder there. Se is getting close to her two year anniversary but since she has a 10 year card I don't see a need to file adjustment of status.

Can anyone pull me out of my brain fog and shed some light on this?

[Robertt S]

I am suffering from amnesia.

Today a reminder popped up on my calendar. It simply said file for adjustment of status and nothing more.
Fiona has a 10 year green card so I cant imagine why I would  put that reminder there. Se is getting close to her two year anniversary but since she has a 10 year card I don't see a need to file adjustment of status.

Can anyone pull me out of my brain fog and shed some light on this?

Gerry, if you remember it was very close to your marriages 2 year mark when she was approved and you did not know if she would be given a 2-year card (CR-1) or the 10 year card (IR-1). I would check the expiration dates on both of their cards just to be certain though. I think it was just you being cautious and covering all your bases after the fiasco you went through with USCIS.

[maxx]

Gerry I think Robert is right. The ten year green cars isn't standard operating procedure. For first time green card holders.

[Pineau]

 Never ending journey.
http://youtu.be/BUGksRLQufs

Playing with movie maker again. 

[Pineau]

Well I didn't file for Adjustment of Status and they did not send a SWAT team to collect her green card so I guess I was just being overly cautious when I put it on my calendar.

A do recall that the last week in Guangzhou I realized we would return to the States one day shy of our two ear anniversary and that was the rule for getting a ten year green card. So I re-booked the tickets to make sure we we had celebrated our two years of marriage before setting foot on US soil . Thinking I had followed the rules and she would get her ten year card I was told by the immigration officer in Los Angeles that she would only get a two year card and not a ten year card. I think that is how the reminder got on my calendar.  Dumb-ass immigration guys didn't even know the rules because when her card arrived it was a ten year card.

So Robert was right again.

[Pineau]

I have been lazy about up dates but it has been too long. Well its been almost two years since she arrived here and a lot has happened. She went back to China and brought back Katie, she graduated from ESL school, she has her drivers license and she is now working for 90 days. She has a GPS that speaks Cantonese and can find her way all the way to Denver and home again. 

She remarks every day how lucky she is and how great America is. When a person grows up in China, they hear stories of America and life here. Good stories and happily ever after stories and terrible stories of exploitation. It was with great anxiety and mixed emotion that Fiona got on that plane and followed me home. I have never given her a reason to regret it.  And secretly Katie and her talk about how wonderful I am to them.  She is living her dream and I can see it in her face. It makes me feel wonderful to know that I have made such a difference in this woman's life. She loves being here and only misses her Guangzhou food. She loves the mountains. We are at the base of the rocky mountains and if you look to the west from our place you can see the snow covered caps less than an hour away. We go up there every chance we get.

I have a QQ blog entitled Guangzhou girls in the USA. I have quite a following. My blog will be almost as dormant as this forum until I post an update, photo, or a video of Fiona, me and Katie. Then I will be  visited by a hundred or more women full of curiosity about our life story here in the US. She is the envy of many of her friends and she took great joy in speaking to her ex husband and telling him how good I am to his daughter and that they are living in her dream house. Normally I would not approve of that, but he so much deserves to have his nose rubbed in it after he abandoned them when Katie was born.  (This is a big house. Honestly our master bedroom suite is bigger than the house she had in Guangzhou)

Katie is doing well in school. Her English is much better and she has made a lot of friends. She volunteers for fund raisers at the school to raise money for her class trip to Washington DC.  I am nearly paid up on the cost of the trip and only have two more installments and it is all paid for. So Next April she will be touring the historical sites made famous by our forefathers. Quite an education for a 13 year girl from Guangzhou. She still comes to see me every day after school to tell me what happened at school and what she learned.  She has grown about a foot and is a tall slender Chinese teenage girl.