I love it when J sends me flowers. Here's the one he sent me during our special day.

And here's the one that I sent him.. :)

In my case, there is the Holy Rosary. I've been praying along with my big brother for 14 days now. It started out as a Novena for Saint Joseph, but I love the feeling of how it makes me feel so peaceful that I'm thinking of keeping the deed every night.

Last Saturday afternoon, I was browsing through VJ when I saw a lot of June filers getting their NOA2. One was even approved in 19 days. I was happy for them but worried that it seems somebody skipped the pile of May filers. I told J about this fear of getting an RFE in the mail. And I won't forget what he said, "Don't worry about it." The remaining hours of that afternoon, I was fighting myself not to click any link from VJ anymore. This was not the usual crazy bets J and I used to have. It was me, fighting the feeling of doubt that we didn't check well enough if our K1 Packet will ace the adjudicator who will go through it. Come night time and when J was fast asleep, I caught myself staring out of my window, hugging my pillow so tight and prayed once again. It was excruciating, but I was praying to let go--let go of my fears and worries, let go of my doubts and obsession to over think. At the end, I kept repeating to myself "In YOUR own time." It's not being cinematic, but tears fell. Yesterday, at Sunday Mass, after the communion, I knelt down and closed my eyes to say almost the same prayer I had the night before. I went to my old routine, I prayed the rosary that evening.

At 5am this morning, J called me on my phone. I know it was the usual alarm for me to get up and talk to him before he goes to work. The camera was not working yet again. After restarting my computer, I called him with my eyes still closed. This time, the camera was working. He asked me in Tagalog, "Still sleepy?" I almost grunted. "You know what will wake you up?" And he was holding a paper in his hand and he said, "And this is not an REF!"

R-E-F? I was lost.

J continued to say, "Honey, the petition got approved!"

My brain goes, "Owwwwwkay, he was referring to RFE. But he said something else. It got approved? It got APPROVED?!"

Yes, it was 5am when I started yelling "Oh my God. Oh my God!!" And another, "Oh my God!"

We were both crying as we updated our Facebook Statuses.

J was so excited that he just couldn't fight the urge to dance. And believe me when I say that he's not a dancer! It made us both laugh. He also reenacted the earlier scene and went "You know what will wake you up," and he goes, "BAM!" with a blurred NOA2 because it was too near from the webcam. He can be so funny sometimes. He told me to update our VJ timeline so we'll know how many days it took for it to be approved. I gladly went to do the task and when the screen refreshed it was a shocking 21 days! :)

The funny thing is that, J never checked his mail. It was a blessing in disguise that somebody did and that the mail came with good news, too. This Thursday, the 8th of July, we will be celebrating our first year as a couple. With every little thing that's been going on, I could really say that we are both happy. Receiving NOA2 is the best anniversary gift ever!

CAMFROG. I don't know if you've heard about this, but this program was actually designed for the hearing impaired. So the video loads really fast but there are delays on the audio. We've tried it for a lot of months and it worked just well. When you use the program though, it seems like it occupies all your desktop space as there are too many windows opened. We're both laptop users, both have built-in microphones. We only have our earphones to make our conversation a little private. But when J needs to take off the earphone, I find it annoying because I can hear myself. Something to do with echoes not properly filtered. So nowadays, we use Cam Frog as an alternative messenger when MSN is acting up.



WINDOWS LIVE MESSENGER/MSN. Yes, it's the same thing. This is our favorite. But late last year mine acted up and was telling me that I don't have a video connected to my computer. I have a built-in webcam and I tried an external one as well, none worked with MSN. But Cam Frog was able to find my webcams, so we were stuck using it until early this year. Google was so helpful because I landed on a page that said this is actually a glitch of MSN and had a simple remedy. You know how there are advertisements on free messenger programs, same goes with MSN. And me being in the Philippines, the program did not give local ads. So all I needed to do was to change from an option the country where I was at, and it worked. Back to free video chats all day long! MSN captures video really fast, no echoes with or without earphones, and will only have a window open for your video and text chat. The chat archives was a good feature as well when we filed our I-129F package.



YAHOO! MESSENGER. The most popular messenger here in the Philippines. But see how pixelated J was when he actually has a much faster internet speed than what I have. And when I talk to my sister who's in Canada, after a few minutes it would give me a static noise. Sometimes the video freezes too. So there are still a lot of improvement that needs to go to their video chatting.

What I love about Y!M is that it offers Mobile capabilities. So when I'm offline, all my Y!M messages goes directly to my mobile phone and I receive it as a text message. Now this is how J and I use this to our advantage: J has Globe Kababayan sim (which obviously has international roaming activated), so when I'm not at home, what we do is that he sends me a message on Y!M, I'll receive it as a text message, I'll reply on his roaming number, and then the cycle goes on. See J has unlimited web browsing/Y!M on his T-Mobile Sidekick, so this is the cheapest way to communicate when we're both not at home. ;)

I hope this was a useful read. So what messenger works best for you and your fiance?

Chazzie posted a comment on my VJ page and an email notification came through advising me about it. I clicked on the blue link that was so tempting.

She asked me if we have received our NOA1. Chazzie and I, and a few more Pinay Fiancées, sent the I-129F on the same day. So we were like checking on each other's statuses, sorta like to track the progress of each other's application. When J woke up, I asked him if he had checked the mail. He might be the laziest guy on earth when it comes to picking up the mail so I was so surprised when he asked me, "Not yet, do you want me to check it?"

After a few minutes, he was like.. "Hon, look!"


There goes the USPS confirmation we have been waiting for. I don't really know if it has been there since the stamped date of 03 June. But I don't really care, 'coz look at the other thing he got in the mail. :)



That is our First Notice of Action, or the so called NOA1 which is really just a receipt notice that... well... that they've received your I-129F and that they'll be processing it. The good thing about it is that the receipt number can be used to track what's happening with your application and you can do this online by going through the USCIS website. Now J is subscribed to mobile and email alerts, which would just help us forget all about the application and just be sane again.

Now, we're just praying for a speedy approval with no reworks or Request For Evidence/s (RFEs). Crossing our fingers now. Ciao!

Done with looking through all your chat archives, your travel itinerary, scanning all your bag tags and receipts you've compiled whilst you were on your fiancée's hometown? So you think you're done with everything, huh? Well, you're almost there.

Whilst we were deciding on what color of folder we will be using, we were also arguing on what tags will end up on our file. We thought of using just the regular Post-it tags, but he thought it might fall off. So whatever he has chosen worked well with him as the final outcome looks really neat.

And here's J, holding on to a very special envelope.

We're still waiting for the receipt from USPS advising us that the package was delivered. We'll be sharing that on future blogs of course. Ciao!