Tomorrow will mark the 2 month anniversary of my brother-in-law's arrival in America. He's lived with us for two months now, so I think it's time for a progress report, yes?
Well, everything has been going spectacularly. Seriously, it's amazing how well he has meshed with our lives. I honestly think life is better with him here than before that. He's a busy student, and he's at school a lot and in his room studying even more, so I've never felt like I didn't have enough time to myself or time alone with my Mian. And all the times he is around, it's so nice to have him. He's such a help around the house and especially with the baby. He's always asking to make me a cup of tea or if I need him to bring anything home. Two weeks ago Mian and I both had to go out of town for career-related things. Normally I would have my mother come to take care of the baby. (Which would take 2 days for her to travel - just for 2 days of care.) Because Chachoo was there, we just spent a week showing him the baby's daily routine and left him in charge for 48 hours. It went very smoothly, and the baby was VERY happy (perhaps in part because Chachoo is much more frequent with the candy and cookies.) But even with lots more candy, it's so nice to have a stand in parent living just downstairs. It's so freeing to be able to run to the store in five minutes for a forgotten ingredient rather than having to pack up the baby to do it - or worse, being stuck at home because of nap time.
The first few weeks were hectic as he began school, in part because the school has so many requirements and there was a lot of running around and appointments to be made. Mostly those consisted of Chachoo and me, since he couldn't drive in the US in the first week. I can't remember when he passed his driving test, but it was within the first week or a few days after. But even that was nice because we got along well, got to know each other better, and get along really well. We seem to have similar personalities. After he began school it was less hectic but still a little stressful because he (and us, behind the scenes) were trying to find a professor - preferably one who would give him funding. The original professor he'd been assigned to had turned out to be not a great match, and their first meeting ended on a note of "I have no money for you, and you're not even working in my field, so why don't you go find a new professor for yourself."
Luckily - and very, very happily - Chachoo was able to find a professor that he liked, that he wanted to work with, and that worked hard on his own side to track down some money for Chachoo. That means he didn't have to pay ANY tuition and is even getting paid a smallish stipend every semester to work as a research assistant for the professor. This research assistantship, or RA, was critical for Chachoo's next planned step - bringing his new wife to America to live with him. To live with US.
First, though, there was a lot of stuff to get in order to do that. He had to have some documents fixed in Pakistan because the marriage certificate had his name misspelled. It took weeks to track down the men who ran the local mosque to have to typo fixed, and even longer to have it shipped over to us along with his wife's passport. She'd had to spend a week or more working on getting a passport as well! When he got the marriage certificate and copy of her passport, he had to turn them into his school's Office of International Programs to get immigration documents issued for his wife. While we waited for that, both Chachoo and we contacted our bank to have official bank letters issued so we could prove we had enough money to support his wife. We also had to write letters pledging to support her. (Back when Chachoo was coming, we had to contact two different cousins to do this for us in order to scrape together enough money to meet the requirement of having enough money for the entire cost of his tuition. Luckily you can have several different sources pool money to meet the total requirements.)
We had all our documents in order and mailed them last Friday. Chachoo's wife had an appointment at the US Embassy in Islamabad yesterday. Thanks God, she was approved for an F-2 visa - the kind of visa for the spouse of an F-1 student. That means she can come and live here but she can't work at all and she can't go to school.
She has a reservation for a flight leaving Pakistan on the 23rd. I'm kicking Chachoo out of his room so I can get in there one last time to paint the walls and decorate. As always, I'll keep you posted :)
