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Minnesota Update #5b

July 2, 2004

Today was a big day and deserved it's own small update addendum.

Early this morning Sarah and I drove downtown for a 9am meeting with Susan, the paralegal assisting us with our immigration papers. She has been invaluable in the whole process, catching mistakes that would have slipped through, knowing little tips that are written NOWHERE, and just being an all-around great help.

After a 90 minute meeting with her, we had finally completed our paperwork! She was going to go over a few things on her own, make copies and then put the entire package in the mail for us.

OUR IMMIGRATION PAPERS HAVE BEEN SUBMITTED!!!

Now we simply wait.

Both Sarah and I are unbelievably relieved to have finally gotten this far, and are very grateful that everything has gone so smoothly up to this point.  Please keep our little packet of papers in your prayers as he mightily battles his way through the twisting and turning government system. We hope that it can be processed without delay and that I can start being an American employee as soon as possible (which, right now, would probably be sometime just after our wedding).

Strangely enough, this pile of infuriating forms represents our life together - this is everything that is allowing us to be together... so much responsibility for pulp products.

From there, we went out for lunch to celebrate.

But that's not all.

What's almost as exciting is that Sarah and I signed the lease to our first apartment (the one mentioned in the previous update)!  Everything is good to go and Sarah gets to move in August 15th (the lady assures us). She even said she'd throw in a storage locked for free ($15 a month!).

Needless to say, today has been a very good day.

"Thank you for your support."

    -Julius Ballanco

PS: Thanks to all of you who signed our online wedding guestbook! (password: internetlove)