Blog

‹ Back

 

_{I'm still new at this so I am attempting to make a long story short but still give enough of a background. So here goes...} 

 

    I was born and raised here in Southwestern Virginia. I grew up learning to hunt, fish, raise a garden and many other skills that have been handed down through my family's generations. Most of them were mountain folks. I learned early on that money wasn't always easy to come by and you have to make do with what you have. (That will be important later). When I turned 17, I decided to become an EMT. 

A Chance Meeting

 

    In late 2010 (I was 27) I had just come out of a pretty rough relationship. I was, for the most part, living on my best friend's couch. Both of us were into games and we started playing this online Martial Arts RPG. As chance would have it, a girl named Richelle was just starting to play the same game in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. As I was on my computer and my friend was on his, we decided to invite other people to our "party" to build levels. That is where I met my future wife. We began talking that night. At the end of our gaming session we exchanged messenger details. We talked nearly every night after that, getting to know each other, and finally planning a visit.

 

First Visit

    Richelle was the first to visit. She came to Charlotte airport in NC about 3 months later. I picked her up and drove her back to Virginia. She stayed in my friend's camper and was here for about a week. By the end of her visit we both knew that we had found our soulmates. She went back to Canada to plan what to do next. 

 

An American in Canada

    I visited her about 4 months later in July (I had just gotten my vacation time from work.) I got to meet her family and explore Winnipeg. It was an amazing trip. Most likely because I had never really been that far away from home and definatly not on my own. As my time came to a close and we began booking the flight back home, we both felt as if we needed to do something else. A feeling of forgetting something or like we left things unsaid fell on us both. At the last minuted I postponed my flight and told my workplace I wouldn't get back for a few more days. We decided to get married before I left. We both knew this was the right thing to do. We had a small ceremony in a park with friends. I could now go back home knowing that soon we wouldn't have to be apart anymore. 

 

 

The Process

 

    We began the immigration process for her to get her citizenship. It was quite the undertaking. Before we were done we had turned in copies of chat histories, marriage certificates, multiple background checks and pictures. It was probably the largest stack of papers I have seen to date. We attended several appointments and spent close to $5000 just to through it all. Finally, 11 months later, Richelle came to the U.S. She wasn't quite done yet. We still had to do the naturalization, she she was finally home.