Arrived in the city of angels after a fairly straightforward flight, and started hitting problems immediately. Only let us in for 6 months, which was disappointing but probably to be expected. The immigration guy we spoke to was pretty helpful, but his supervisor who he checked with was definitely old school - all the posters around about customer service and being the face of the nation were having no effect on this one. It may be possible to get an extension for another 6 months from an internal immigration office, but the mood on the web forums seems to be that if you do this you can kiss the rest of your visa goodbye so queer the pitch for return visits, so may cut our losses and head up to Canada at Easter and spend the summer touring there - want to do it sometime so may as well be sooner rather than later. Means we might miss Florida out this trip, but still aim for Vegas and New Orleans. Don't have to decide for a few months yet...
US Postal Service wont allow you to rent a PO box if you are not a resident/citizen, so we will have to hang around to get each piece of post one at a time, and Citibank left us high and dry by not allowing us to open an account with the motel as an address. We could open one against our UK address, but then we could only get an ATM card for the first 6 months, which is not really viable for buying a home. Or wait until we have the RV on a park which would count as a residential address...catch 22
The lovely lady at Wells Fargo, on the other hand, opened the account there and then, gave us pre-coded visa cards until our real ones arrive in the post to the motel in what should be less than 5 days, and was helpfulness and efficiency incarnate. And she recommended an excellent Thai for supper.
I've tried to not get too stressed over it all...
motel is as seedy and distressed as it looks on the web pages, and you do expect to see outlines taped on the carpet, but the Indian guys running it have been really helpful and friendly as the trip advisor reviews said they would be, so unless we hear drive bys in the night I think we will be OK. It does feel like part of the movies' Americana image. And it is only about a mile from Compton, so won't be walking much
so tomorrow we get on with the real shopping....
US Postal Service wont allow you to rent a PO box if you are not a resident/citizen, so we will have to hang around to get each piece of post one at a time, and Citibank left us high and dry by not allowing us to open an account with the motel as an address. We could open one against our UK address, but then we could only get an ATM card for the first 6 months, which is not really viable for buying a home. Or wait until we have the RV on a park which would count as a residential address...catch 22
The lovely lady at Wells Fargo, on the other hand, opened the account there and then, gave us pre-coded visa cards until our real ones arrive in the post to the motel in what should be less than 5 days, and was helpfulness and efficiency incarnate. And she recommended an excellent Thai for supper.
I've tried to not get too stressed over it all...
motel is as seedy and distressed as it looks on the web pages, and you do expect to see outlines taped on the carpet, but the Indian guys running it have been really helpful and friendly as the trip advisor reviews said they would be, so unless we hear drive bys in the night I think we will be OK. It does feel like part of the movies' Americana image. And it is only about a mile from Compton, so won't be walking much
so tomorrow we get on with the real shopping....
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