Hello everybody, Sanibonani, Bonjour. Welcome to the Empire of Watkins.
This is a 3 part story of how Sean and I ended up going to Canada when we were actually supposed to be going to America…
Before hubby and I met he had always had a desire to move to the United States. After having visited Chicago on a business trip he fell in love with the city. (he is such a city snob :)). Also who wouldn’t fall in love with Chicago it’s absolutely BEAUTIFUL!
He came back from his trip and said we have to go there for a holiday and look at areas we could possibly stay in, which was great. So being the planner and overly detailed person I am, the excitement began because that meant I could start planning our trip a whole year early.
The planning was a success and the trip was amazing. We flew with Turkish airlines (my first flight and trip international) and we flew via Turkey – Istanbul. 
We landed in Istanbul in the early hours of the morning and were there for a 9-hour layover before continuing on to Chicago. We were able to get a day visa on arrival in Istanbul, so we decided to go into the city and do a bit of sightseeing. Istanbul is beautiful, I loved the architecture, the old buildings, and the mosques. Definitely, a place to go back to and explore more.
Back on the plane and the 11-hour journey to Chicago began. We arrived at O’Hare International airport in the evening and it was cold! I was not emotionally prepared for what was ahead of me.
Chicago was breathtaking in more ways than one, we spent 10 days there eating way too much and freezing our bums off. From there we boarded the Amtrak from Chicago Union station to Los Angeles Union station to visit family, which took 2 days and 2 night.
Then a few days before New Years of 2016 hubby received a LinkedIn message from Amazon, headhunting him for a position in the United States.
Fast forwarding a bit Sean ended up being interviewed by Amazon back in South Africa a month later and got offered a job to work in America. Yay!
You can imagine that by now I had started looking for a home, a church, a new doctor, and even a gynecologist, because as exciting as this was I needed to find one before we arrived in the states (pedantic much)
Immigration process began and little did we know that we would only be offered the visa if we were selected in a lottery… Huh? So we got put into the H1B Visa lottery in the hopes of being offered a work visa to get into the States.
Which we never got… so America was off the books. For now…
