Luckily in the last few years, the US and Australian governments decided to play nice and it was not necessary for me to relinquish my Australian citizenship, so now I am officially a dual-citizen and will have 2 passports. Of course, the reality is that if being a dual citizen wasn't an option, I would not have even pursued US Citizenship, as you will only ever pry my Australian passport out of my cold dead hands.
Basically all of the paperwork has been done for almost 2 months now, but you are not officially a citizen until you go through a Naturalization Ceremony, which is what happened today. So my closest 905 friends and I and all of their friends and family, including Jen and Callum gathered at the Montebello Country Club. The ceremony only lasted 45 minutes at best, but it took most of the day to get there, get processed in, get into the ceremony room, sit though the ceremony, get processed out and get back to the Huntington Beach area. Such is traffic in LA and also the problem of needing to get 1500 people, most of whom English is a second language for mustered into the right lines in an orderly and timely fashion.
This ceremony was a small one. They regularly have them at the Los Angeles Convention center and process 3,000 new citizens in one go. It must be the definition of organized chaos at those.
All of the new citizens were given a little American flag, which Callum has hold of in this photo.
Yes that is Callum in fancy black pants, a button up shirt, a vest and a tie, with white sneakers. Send your inquiries to Jen.
Here is a poorly lit photo of the stage where the dignitaries and the federal judge made their speeches from.
The whole thing was a bit overwhelming for my little buddy who promptly fell asleep in the car in the way home.
Now, I suddenly have the urge to drive an unnecessarily large car and drink tepid yellow fizzy beer.
4 comments:
Congrat in the us citizenship. Have fun going through customs with your two passports now. That should be fun.
And as for the white sneakers with the dressy outfit, Jen I think that he looked very cute. I think the only way to dress up an outfit is to put a great pair of white sneakers.
Does this mean that you are allowed to vote now? Do the OC republicans know this? I'd imagine they would have proposed building a fence separating liberal Australia from California.
Crikey!
Did your accent magically vanish?
Congrats BIL thanks for the heads up nice to find out same time as the rest of the world. literally. And now that you are an austmerican you cannot make comments like that about our cars and beer!! congrats again
Ray and Nat
Post a Comment