One month later...

So we've been here for over a month now.  Both at work and at home, we've been through mini roller coasters in emotions and are now at an even keel...at least until Leon starts work.  Change is not easy - for Leon because he likes stability and patterns; for me because I need to quickly find my bearings and do my job well.  Nothing bad or wrong at all - we all deal with life and changes differently.  We just need to know how each other works and be supportive as we navigate through the first few months.

We've not been sitting on our butts idling for sure.  So far, we've visited a few places:

1. Birch Run - factory outlets loh...a few times
2. Frankenmuth - sweet Bravarian town
3. Lansing - for car hunting
4. Traverse City - overnight stay; awesome food and lovely shops
5. Troy - SHOPPING! and Asian supermarkets!
6. Mt Pleasant - eating
7. Big Rapids - eating again
8. Grayling - kayaking

There were also a few administrative things to get done:

1. Applied for Leon's working visa
2. Got my social security card
3. Took both theory and practical driving tests and received our Michigan driving licenses
4. Bought two cars and insurance for those - painful painful experience with the first car... see below
5. Bought furniture for the new house - on laybys, i.e. pay bit by bit until delivery because the house is not ready yet
6. Got my first US credit card
7. Activate insurance

Getting everything above was easy - the most painful like I say, is buying a car.  Without credit history, big ticket item purchases become very challenging. 

Of all cars, we decided to get the Lexus RX350 because it's a car we've always wanted to try and Leon likes it.  The problem began when we wanted to lease a brand new car because we don't have enough cashflow to pay upfront.  The car's $46K or so.  Here're the hoops we had to jump through all because we had no credit rating:

1. Put $500 deposit to reserve/chope the car (normal)
2. Lexus will agree to the lease but we have to pay all 24 months' installments upfront!
3. Plus a $3k security deposit
4. They then wanted my boss to call them to verify my identify - they claim they couldn't reach him and this delayed the transaction further.
5. Finally, they revealed the HR would work as well and my HR colleague did me a favor and called them back.
6. Then, the application was denied...but I was told that's ok, we've been approved???
7. And by the way, until we agreed and signed all the documents, they won't bring the car in from another state for us so we would have to drive to Lansing 3 times to buy the car when twice would do.

So I had to provide constructive feedback...like I like to do :o)  To the dealership's credit, they acknowledged the process was tedious, agreed to absorb the security deposit, AND deliver the car to us instead of us driving over to collect it.  I was ok - but the experience sure left a bad taste.  In contrast, Volkswagen approved financing for me on my second car under their foreign professionals scheme, gave me a good interest rate (compared to the credit union's 6% rate that a colleague got), and allowed no-penalty full redemption after three months (which is what I wanted).

The next key task is to set up health care and start monitoring our health again.  It's taking a while but I'm told this is normal.  As always, I'm finding ways to hurry things.  This is important to us.

With Fall upon us, the weather is getting cold and we're moving towards the holiday season.  Halloween is closest and we've started carving pumpkins.  I don't know if children will come knocking on our doors but I do know we'll be ready with treats if they do.