Yay, I’m done with my fingerprinting at the Oakland USCIS Center for my citizenship and I am now awaiting their next notice for my interview/test. If I pass the test and interview, if I get approved, then next step will be my oath-taking!!! I will finally be a US Citizen, yehey!
How time flew by so quickly, I came here last May 2005 and now I am applying for citizenship.
For more of my immigration stories , visit my Charina.net.
One of my friends, my kumare, asked me when I will be going back to the Philippines for a vacation. Well, I really want to take a month’s vacation but there are a lot of things I have to consider first before I can go like the job I would be leaving for a month , the expenses going back to the Philippines , the bills that would pile up while we’re gone, all those things.
I do miss the Philippines too by the way, I miss everything about my beloved Philippines – the familiar places, the pollution hehehe, the weather, the “init” and the “ulan”, my family and friends, the nosy neighbors, everything!
I am definitely going back when I’m done with my mission here… Mission of what? I don’t know yet but I think God has sent me here in America for a reason… 
I had my biometrics at Oakland USCIS office last Wednesday, March 25 . I took a day off from work just for this important thing to do for my citizenship.
Anyway, we got there around 8 am, parked beside the USCIS building, and paid the parking ticket machine $3.00 for the three-hour parking. My appointment was for 9 am but I saw the guard letting the line of applicants come in by 8:10 so with my appointment notice and a photo ID, I fell in line and got inside . The guard handed me a form to fill out, a number and a newly-sharpened pencil ( the guard actually had this electric pencil sharpener beside him and he plugs the pencil on it before giving it to the applicant hence “newly-sharpened pencil). Armed with my deadly pencil, I sat down to fill out my form. I don’t know what was up with me because I kept making mistakes in writing the information needed so I kept erasing and erasing whatever I wrote.
Just some minutes went by and my number got called, the guy checked my full-of-erasures-paper, told me to show my hands palms up ( for what reason I don’t know) and told me to go up the second floor.
Five minutes later, I was called and my fingerprints were taken. I was expecting to have my picture taken as what happened to all my other biometrics so I kept trying to tidy up my unruly hair. But thanks God no picture taking happened. The pretty girl who did my fingerprints, signed my appointment notice and gave it back to me with a survey to fill out. Survey finished, I went out right after.
I was done and out of the USCIS office before 8:30 am.