I did it!

Today i became American! The oath ceremony was nice, lasted about an hour, and we got to wave the little flags and sing songs about America. There was about 80 people there doing the oath. I think I was the only one from Finland, most people were from the Latin American countries. For once the immigration officers were pretty nice and friendly. 

So happy that's all been taken care of! 

End of May

I haven't posted that much lately, and I probably won't be posting that much this summer.

Life here is slowly but surely coming to an end. It is of course sad in a way, but more than anything I'm excited to go back home finally.

I passed my citizenship exam last week. It was easy since I knew all the answers to the 100 questions and they only asked me six. They asked who the governor of Florida is, what Martin Luther King Jr was known for etc. I was nervous more than anything. The lady interviewing me was very official and after every question she asked me she stared at me looking very serious and intimidating. Before the whole thing started I had to lift up my hand and swear I would only tell the truth, so yeah, it was super official. They went through my whole application which was several pages long. It had all my previous residency and employment history, tax papers for the last three years and things like that. All in all it actually took less than 15 minutes though, which I was surprised because my letter said it would take two hours. I mentioned that to the interview lady on my way out and she said that it sometimes takes two hours when the applicant has criminal records they need to look into. :O

I was told I will receive a letter about the time of my oath ceremony next month. The letter arrived on Thursday and said my ceremony is on the 29th... that's Tuesday in like a few days! The good thing is that I'm already off on Tuesdays since it would be an awfully short notice to try to get the day off. So after Tuesday, looks I will officially be Finnish-American.

Last week I started looking for flights to Finland in the fall, just to get an idea on what price range we should be looking at. I found a supergood deal, one way tickets to Finland with only one layover for $550 per person. That is like half of what I was expecting to pay. I discussed it with Chris and we decided to get them. We'll be flying on September 18th. The cats Neko and Sammy will be flying too and their flights are almost as expensive than ours.. well not exactly, $175 per cat, but with all the official paperwork and vet bills and buying them airline approved carriers, I am sure their travel will cost at least as much as ours!

So there is a lot of planning and stressing going on about the move. We extended our house lease till the end of August, and from the beginning on September we'll be staying with family until it's time to leave. The packing will start soon, and the hard part is of course deciding what to leave behind. We've already done a few rounds to Goodwill this year. It's a store where they take your old stuff and sell it. I know we could try to sell some stuff ourselves, but most of it is not really worth anything, and we need to get rid of it sooner rather than later. I think the only thing we'll end up selling is our car, and I don't even want to think about how to do that just yet.

All that to say, my project for the summer is packing and getting rid off stuff, and I don't know if I'll be blogging that much about it. We'll see. There is a lot to do and I'm working hard and so is Chris. Allthough I am actually taking a whole week off in two weeks! It's my first vacation since I started in my job over a year ago... a much needed break for sure! I hope to get a lot done in the house during that week.

The kittens are growing and they are very, very playfull. They'll be eight weeks on Monday, and I think the first one may be leaving us already on Tuesday.. we'll see if we have time though. The other two I'm not so sure about. I've had people tell me they want one and then when I try to talk to them more about it they never get back with me. :/ But I'm sure they will find homes, they are so cute and adorable.

Gonna get going now. Time for some more coffee!

Through the car window

I've wanted to make a little post about our neighborhood, especially for the people in Finland reading this, since it's not that interesting for local people. I don't have good pictures, because they've all been taken through the car window. I'm planning on getting some more pictures soon, maybe even step out the air conditioned car for a few shots. :P I'd like to get some pictures of random people's yards that are looking really pretty this time of the year.

Chris said it the best: "Florida is a really beautiful place, but only to look at from behind a glass window". So here we go, photos through the window. .. ... And no, it's not all super pretty, it's just random photos of our neighborhood.

To start with I have a few photos taken from the road that we drive from our house toward downtown. We live 5-10 minutes from downtown, depends on traffic.

This is a pretty typical looking road away from city centers. Nothing to look at really. 

The same road a minute later, getting more toward downtown of our central Florida town. 

This is a little closer dowtown again. Taken on a weekend morning. Usually  traffic would be a lot worse. 

I don't have photos of the dowtown right now. It's mostly banks anyway. A few restaurants and art galleries etc. 

The next photos are of some houses that are around the lake we live close to. They all have a nice lakeview and I bet some pretty rich people live there. Not the best photos because they were taken from the moving car. 

The next photos are of the closest little shopping center to us. It has a Publix supermarket and some other businesses we never go to. The cool thing is that it's the shopping center that was used in the movie "Edward Scissorhands". 

And to end with, toward the south side of our town, my work place and some cow pastures. I see a lot more of them than I ever see the beach. :P

My office. Sorry for the bad picture. 

Bunch of nothingness. It's a rather new road and I have a feeling the fields will be gone in ten years. 

So that's it for now.. oh, wait.. what's this picture doing here?!

:D

Busy, busy with cat drama!

I guess it's been almost a month that I wrote anything. It's been busy with the kittens around so that's my excuse!

There is a lot of work having six cats in the house. Yes, six! There's the two originals, Neko and Sammy, then the newcomer, Pulla, and her three kittens. Just providing food, water and three litter boxes(!) takes time and energy, but then you gotta try to spend some time with all of them, especially with the kittens so they grow into responsible and social cats. It's been stressfull too, because Neko and Sammy don't get along with Pulla and there is a lot of hissing and growling going on several times a day.. :/

The kittens are almost 5 weeks old, so we are looking into giving them away in the beginning of June as long as they are well trained and independent. One of them has been reserved already, and there's been some interest for the other two as well, and I am waiting for confirmation on both of them. But then we gotta find a place for Pulla too, we can't keep her with our move getting closer, and I have no idea what to do.

We are very seriously wanting to make September the moving month. It's a lot later than we wanted, but we are trying to pay off all the credit card debt before the move, and even then it will be a tight schedule. We just got our tax returns for last year, so that helped a lot getting one of the higher interest cards down. We don't have crazy amounts of debt like most Americans - our credit cards have been used mainly to buy flights to Finland in the past. We hate having to use them, and hate the American concept of getting into huge amounts of debt to go through school. That is one of the biggest reasons why we feel there is not really a future for us here..

Anyway, September could be the time to move on, finally. To be honest, I don't think there's ever going to be a perfect time, but we need to make the leap at some point. I am trying to find out about finding jobs and apartments in Finland, but it's hard to do  from here. I'm gonna be keeping my eyes open and send some job applications in a few moths and if nothing comes back, I'll just have to get there and I'm sure I'll get something pretty fast.

It's weird that I am actually a lot more nervous moving back to Finland than I was four years ago moving here. I came with two suitcases and that's it. But Chris already had a job and a place for us to live here, so that made it easier. This time we are both going and starting all over. Plus Chris will have to get used to a completely different society and language. I know he will enjoy the challenge and I know his personality will be a better fit over there, but I know it will not be easy! That's why I'm hoping he'll find a school program in English pretty fast to give him some direction on the new life. 

I have my citizenship exam next week so I should study a little. The questions are actually pretty easy so I'm not too worried about it.  

The weather's been hot lately, and it's hard to believe it can still get a lot hotter, which it will in the next month. I haven't spent time out that much at all anymore. I step out to water the peppers and then I run back in all sweaty. But the peppers have ripened nicely and we've already eaten several. They are delicious. 

Time to check on the kitties and clean the litter box. :P Like I said, been busy lately!