I now began the long wait with a strange combination of feelings including loneliness, growing excitement and anxious anticipation of our coming reunion in my new country. It was a kind of manic depression that I had only experienced once shortly before the run up to our wedding.

Fortunately for me at the time, I was optimistic that I might be there in as little as six more months but as it turned out, it was closer to ten. I was anxious to hear about the progress my new hubby would be making on the immigration application and was frustrated when he was unable to get at it immediately when he arrived back in Minnesota. To add insult to injury, the internet service that got us together sold us a package of instructions that caused an even further delay. It turned out that a lot of the information they said was necessary for the first stage of the application really was not needed until much later.

The wrong advice cost us an additional six weeks before we were able to file the first application of the burdensome immigration application process. On July 2nd, my hubby was finally able to send off the 3/4 inch stack of papers for the first time. I was greatly relieved when he gave me the news but that turned out to be the first step in an outrageously costly and time consuming process that gave us a better understanding of why more people just decide to sneak over the border than go through the kind of ordeal that we had to. I guess they must have thought that all four foot ten and 85 lbs of me was a dangerous threat. Thanks for the memories Department of Homeland Security!

It felt really great to finally get back to a familiar place. My new hubby felt like he had been through a war and it was good just to be back home but there was not much time to savor the victory. The big project that was supposed to be delivered to his main client a few days after he left was still sitting at the machine shop. This was very disappointing news to say the least. What should have been a big feather in his hat was rapidly turning into a sour note because of the late delivery.

Not only had the first phase of the project not been delivered on time, the client had new requests for changes to the second phase of the project whose due date was rapidly approaching. The thing that he most wanted to do was to get started on the vast amount of paperwork that was necessary to initiate the visa application which would bring me there to the US. He knew that would have to wait until he got caught up with business. To make matters worse, he ended up suffering from a bad case of jet lag for nearly two weeks after getting home. The weather was also cold, rainy and overcast for the whole two weeks. The effort needed to get sleep at night and stay awake during the day was huge. Somehow he managed to endure.

I had made the flight back to Butuan and was settling back into my normal routine, unaware of the multitude and magnitude of problems my new husband was having trying to get back home. He had finally made it to the Minneapolis airport but was now faced with another dilemma. The only airline that flew back to the small northern airport where his car was parked several hundreds miles away was Northwest.

He decided he had no choice but to deal with them one more time but he was not happy about it. He approached the ticket counter barely able to control the rage that was bubbling inside of him. The good news was that there was a seat open on a flight that was just about to leave. The bad news was that, it would cost him nearly double what he had already paid for the same flight. At least, by then, he wasn’t shocked about it. He boarded the plane for the last leg home, thankful that he would soon be in his own bed again for the first time in three weeks. After the long, disappointing and arduous trip, he would finally be home at last. Now would begin the long wait to bring his new bride back with him.

After the great disappointment of being rebuffed in his attempts to spend some time with his daughter, he began to think about getting back home to his business. He called the airline to see if he could get his departure date moved up and that was when he discovered that he had no departure date!

To his shock and dismay, the airline told him that since he had not gotten on the plane for the first leg of his flight, according to airline policy, he had forfeited the second and third legs. This had not been explained in any of the communications or literature that accompanied the ticket when it was purchased. This was the same airline that had tried to extort $1900 from him for the simple upgrade that he had requested on the Manila to San Francisco flight. The extortion was the reason that he had refused to get on the first leg to start with.

His outrage was, by this time, impossible to suppress. While he was yelling at the airline supervisor over the phone for what he considered to be theft, she calmly said that she could arrange for him to continue on his way back home for ONLY another $700 to buy back the ticket that he had already paid for. His reply was “Are you crazy?!?!?!?” as he slammed the phone down. Thankfully, there was another airline desk nearby who had heard his outrage. That airline offered him a ticket back home for half that price. The original airline, Northwest, went bankrupt a few months later. It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving company.

The long flight from Manila to San Francisco was a relative breeze. He left in the evening and with a little help from the Philippine Airlines bartender, the twelve hour flight passed quickly and easily. His plan was to spend a few days in San Francisco with his daughter whom he hadn’t seen for many years.

He had been very close with his daughter until his vicious and vindictive ex-wife was finally successful in her attempts to keep him from her. Anyone who is familiar with the long history of political and judicial corruption in the state of Illinois can easily guess what happened there. He had been in phone contact with her for more than a year and had sent many thousands of dollars over that period of time to try to help her out of a very bad situation that she had gotten herself into. After going through great difficulty to make the proper flight arrangements to have an extended lay over in San Francisco he had finally arrived.

He called her when he got in and arranged for her to pick him up at the airport in the car that he had recently bought for her. After waiting for more than an hour she did not show up. When he called her back she said that she had gotten sick and couldn’t make it. He begged her to come and spend just a little time but she wouldn’t do it. The spell that her mother had cast on her was unbreakable. His heart was broken and he could hardly stand the disappointment.

My new hubby felt really bad about having to leave me so abruptly at the airport. He was thinking that I would be able to come in and see him off. He had not flown much in recent years and never internationally and had forgotten about the new security measures after 9-11 which would not allow me to see him off in the airport. The good news came when he checked in for his flight. He discovered that Philippine Airlines had a nice waiting lounge for business class and first class travelers that served free food and drinks.

After a little while he got paged over the intercom to come to the Philippine Airline desk. To his surprise, they gave him an upgrade to first class for no extra charge. He would have unlimited leg room and a very comfortable reclining seat for the long flight back. Then when he went back to the lounge, there were no tables open so he sat at the bar and ordered a drink. Without him asking, the bartender kept refilling his drink every time he emptied it. Before long he was feeling no pain. It was then that he discovered quite by accident the solution to the problem of enduring long flights. That was to get high before taking off.

You might recall from previous blogs that my husband’s flight to the Philippines was a real nightmare. With the combination of his size, medical condition and cramped coach airline seat it was a minor miracle that he made it at all. He had decided that he would not be able to stand the long flight back to the US the way he had come over in coach. He called the airline to try to get an upgrade from coach to business class on the leg back from Manila to San Francisco. They were willing to give him the upgrade but wanted an additional $1900 in order to do it. The original complete round trip ticket was only $1300. To say the least he was outraged over the obvious extortion. He was able to purchase a business class ticket from Philippine Airlines for only $1100 for the Manila to San Francisco leg. That turned out to be the only pleasant part of the trip.