Oh man, we goin' way off topic here...
I've been playing "getting packed up to get the FUCK out of here," (two more days!
) and in-between that bouts of SSF2T HD Remix. I wanna delve more into Chrono Trigger DS and the AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME HOLEE-SHIT DID I MENTION IT WAS AWESOME Musou Orochi 2 PSP port, but I might just save those for the hours waiting at the airport monday and the long-ass plane flight.
I haven't been following your story, but is the wife coming with you?
I hope so! 
Yeah, she's the reason why it took this long to get out of this shitty house and town. The process of getting her a U.S. visa took months.
Wait, I thought if you married a foreign woman, she would get U.S. citizenship automatically. You're saying that this isn't so?
This could really complicate things with my current girlfriend.
If you could get it automatically, don't you think a lot of people would be committing the ol' marriage fraud thing to get to the States? You have to apply for a marriage visa. It's an overall easy process but it takes time and there is a lot of paperwork/getting ready, plus multiple trips to the U.S. embassy. We were married for over a year when we applied, and it took us about three month to get everything finalized. You need to basically prove that your marriage isn't a sham (evidence like joint bank accounts, bills paid together, dated photos of you two together over time, etc.) and also pay a number of fees (I think it was around $900 U.S. total). You also need your spouse to get a health check done at a certified location. And you also need to show your tax statement for the last year and basically prove that you can support her (or get a co-supporter who can do the same)
I don't know if it's the same everywhere, but at the Japan U.S. embassy, if you have any mistakes in your paperwork or you are missing something, they turn you away and you have to make another appointment, and the window for them isn't always close. I worked with my father on this and we checked and double-checked everything to make sure it was good. I also needed to have him as a co-supporter, so we needed a copy of his passport...this was was the last hold-up for us. I almost freaked out when the lady at the embassy told me I needed that; we don't live anywhere close to embassy and had to book trips/hotel rooms in Tokyo each time, so it cost a lot to do everything. Luckily I was able to mail the copy to them after we went back home.
You can of course keep this going even if you are living apart; once you do your part, it's essentially all on your spouse to finish things up, so a lot of people start the process, return to the States, and then wait for their spouse to arrive. I didn't want to do this so I stayed here; luckily it was fine since we just lived with her folks until it was all done.
So now it's less than 48 hours until we head to the States; now we are gonna live with my folks, but compared to the shithole I've been in these past five months, it's like going from a shack to a mansion. It'll be nice to not freeze my ass off indoors too!
