What a day

Ok, I finally have some time to write a little more about yesterday.
I had the appointment for the interview at 8:20 AM. We got there at about 7:50 and by 8:30 I was called up. I guess the USCIS officer understood that my English is pretty good so I didn’t take any kind of English test. She asked me a couple of questions and gave me a sheet of paper with ten questions on it. I wrote down my answers and she checked them and said I passed. That was it. She handed me another piece of paper stating that at 3:30 PM the oath ceremony would be held and we left.
That gave us time to go eat a little something and get my step daughter’s birthday cake since she turned 18 yesterday. We went home waited for her to come home from school and went back to USCIS. I was already seated with the 58 other people who were going to become a citizen that day when a friend of ours showed up. He was trying to make it but we thought he wasn’t going to get in anymore.

Once everybody was there and all last formalities were cleared up the ceremony started.
They played the Star Spangled Banner and we all sang. Then, we all took the Naturalization Oath of Allegiance and then we said the pledge of Allegiance. I thought it was the coolest thing. Then it got “better”. They showed a video with President Bush telling us how much he welcomed us etc. And then came a sort of collage of pictures, but playing in the background was “God bless the USA”. Now I love this song and always have. I lost it and started crying. Great, huh? Just now I went to Google it and I found wav. file and started crying again.
After that each person was called to the front and we received our Certificates of Naturalization. We took pictures and hugged.
They had some people there who let us fill out forms to get registered to vote. I thought that was really neat since me and my step daughter did it together.

Then, to celebrate this special day for all of us we went out to dinner. We decided on traditional American cuisine and went to Don Pablo’s. Well, my step daughter picked it and I had steak so we were all happy!

Tomorrow we have a little party with some friends. Since it’s a big football day we kind of combined the two and the party starts at 4:30. But that’s very American.

All right, I better go check on the cup cakes I just made. The have stars and stripes sprinkles!!!