We set a date last Thursday for when I will leave my country to go to Michelle and we booked tickets right away also. I will leave on Thursday October 2nd, so that is about 6 weeks until it is time. Exciting!

I can tell you that I became quite nervous. There are a lot of things that I have to arrange within 4 weeks, like stopping all kinds of subscriptions and selling my household as I will leave my place the latest on September 18. And next to that, I also have to look into what I want to take with me and what I will have to throw away, such as with my clothes and other personal belongings.

I read the news of Hawaii on a frequent base and I have to say that sometimes I think it is quite scary. Yes, it kinda gives me cold feet (lucky for me it is nice and warm over there so I don’t mind my cold feet much then haha). But ok, I think I wouldn’t be normal if I didn’t care about things.

I also think that you are home wherever you feel yourself at home and I didn’t even want to leave when I was at Michelle on Hawaii because I felt myself at home over there. And these thoughts are exactly where I think about when I get a bit nervous; I could’ve been on Hawaii for almost a year now if I listened to my feelings indeed back then, my mind told me not to do it, though. I don’t think I could leave my family with the worries of sorting my things out.

Oh well, I’m sure we’ll beat ourselves through it all, just about six weeks left and then it will be another long journey (21 hours including stop-overs) to fly to the rock.

But this wasn’t arranged all at once unfortunately, some things came up before we actually got approved…

I had an appointment at the consulate in Amsterdam on August 12 at 1.30 pm and I arrived at the consulate at around 1.05 pm. All appointments are at that time so you basically have to form a line and the first in line is first served as well. I had two persons before me in line when I arrived but soon it were a lot more people.

The gates went open at around 1.20/1.25 pm and the security officers told us that we should line up in one of the two available lines. There was a line for normal (non-immigration) visas and one for immigration, US Citizens and other cases. Because I was a bit nervous, I initially lined up at the wrong line which actually set me back 4 people in line while I could have been the first in immigration haha.

After the security checks and some time waiting in line, I could give my papers to a nice Dutch speaking employee who then told me that I would have to wait for a while and then would be called when the consul would be ready for my interview.

While waiting, I talked a bit with a few other people, who were also there for their immigration interview, and they asked me if I was nervous. To their surprise I had to tell them that I was indeed quite nervous. I was quite nervous because I had the chance to be rejected for the visa because of an old conviction. It was something small and I never had a real conviction, but yeah, you never know what would happen and what the decision would be if the consul.

I was called to the window at around 2.45/3.00 pm and the consul asked me how I was doing so i told him that I was ok but that I was also a bit nervous for the interview. He told me that I had nothing to fear but yeah, I was still fearing the outcome because of that conviction. The consul first asked me a few standard questions, I read on some forums that these questions are merely meant to see if I would really know Michelle. The questions were, among others, how and when I met Michelle, what my birthday was, what Michelle’s age was, what I like about Michelle, why I want to marry her and that kind of questions. It was indeed nothing to worry about.

And then it was time to talk about my conviction. I told the consul that what happened back then and what the ruling of the judge was. The consul was a bit unsure if he could give the visa because there was a different classification on the court records. The official translation of the court records was also a bit odd as it could be explained as if I would actually had done time which I, in fact, never had to do. The consul explained to me that the visa application would be put on hold and that he wanted me to write an email to the consulate in which I would tell the whole story in English so they could see if they could make a decision with that.

I send the email out the same evening (or more like night because it was around 1 am when I actually did it) to the consulate in which I explained everything and I also had a small explanation from my uncle, who is a retired lawyer, added about the classification and what the reason would be that it was different than what my part was in the whole thing.

And then we had to wait…

Until this morning, two days after the interview. I called at around 8.30 am to check if the consulate received my email on the right email address and the consulate told me that they just printed it and that they would add it to my file and that a decision would be made as soon as possible…

Then, 30 minutes later, I received an email from the consulate which contained the message that the consul read my mail and that he has said that there was no reason not to give me the visa and that I could call them for an appointment to hand over my passport, which I did right away. So today I drove to Amsterdam to give them my passport. I finally get the visa :D

So yeah, it was a bit sweating because I could have been punished for something stupid which I had something to do with more than 10 years ago but fortunately it was end good all good for us. And now we will go on to the next steps.. to book a plane ticket, pick a wedding date, cancel a lot of stuff like the Dutch insurances and such and of course I have to sell all my household goods.. But ok, we will start at the start in a bit, and that’ll be getting me a ticket to Michelle