we went to the american consultate and got the low down on the visa options to get the lady back into the states asap. the plan was to file for a financee visa and we thought that would have taken 3 or 4 months at most. but as it turns out, because she had overstayed her visa for over a year, she is actually banned from coming to the states for 10 years! that’s right, 10 fucking years and it still holds if they become your spouse! the lady at the american consultate told us that maybe 5% of the petitions that are filed for spouses/fiancees that overstayed are accepted and the only reason they were accepted was because of grave medical conditions (where the spouse couldn’t leave the states). so, after hearing the news, we were quite both pretty depressed. she cried half of the day and we couldn’t get motivated to do anything but hold on to each other. we feel like these are the last days of our relationships on some level and although we tried to be optimistic, it simply only left bittersweet tears. anyway, although i am planning on consulting a lawyer when i get back, we don’t have too much hope. and if it is possible, it’s gonna cost a pretty dime for something that we had simply taken for granted. and as i think back about our relationship and all the shit we went through and to finally come at some sort of stablity that at the last moment a force greater than us tears us apart.

regardless, we’re try to see the silver lining in all this crazy drama. i told her that i am definitely receptive to being in new zealand more often and longer but i couldn’t make any plans until orange moves into our new headquarters. to be honest, the more i think about it, the more appealing the idea becomes to me. the idea would be that i spend about 6 months in SF and 6 months in NZ. i would be in SF during the summer shooting weddings and working orange on a more day to day level. and the other 6 months, i would be engineering/travelling in asia and doing travel photography. it’s quite clear to me that NZ is a great place to live but the outdoors accessibly and landscape here is unbeatable. and the nice plus is that everything is 50% off! i can even actually afford a cool house here! anyway, it’s too early to plan these things but thinking about the alternatives to our new reality keeps the flame burning.