The Arrival

3 days and oh so many miles later, we arrived at the border and my biggest anxiety.  I have had so many dreams that I was told I would not be able to enter the country at the boarder.  So the first experience was coming up to the crossing, off a huge, slippery, metal bridge, and thinking I was in the wrong lane so I switched.  One of the first questions was why did I switch lanes and did I realize that I cut that person off....GREAT!  We were told to pull under a cover and go inside...inside is where I got in trouble.  The boarder agent wanted to know why I thought it would be ok to pack up all of our stuff and just come to Canada..."that is not how they do it in the United States, is it?".  My answer was yes, because that is exactly how it happened when Sean came to the U.S.; but having watched enough cop type shows I decided just to agree and play humble.  He then asked me a thousand questions and then told me to sit.  When he called me back up he told me that he had every right to deny my entrance for up to a year, but since I was married to a Canadian he would grant me an entry visa for 3 months.  In that explanation he also pointed out a couple times that I needed to be very grateful for this opportunity...so again I decided to be humble and thank him over and over.

I was then dismissed and told to send Sean in...gracious I had such mixed feelings of happiness that I was going to be able to stay and totally feeling like a little girl who had just gotten in trouble by her dad.  So Sean goes in and comes out with a clipboard where we had to list the entire contents of the car and the U-Haul...and the funny thing was they didn't seem to give two hoots about the dogs and that was one of our biggest collective concerns.

So here I sit with 3 months to get all of my paper work together and lots of stuff to fill out....