Landed in the United States on the 03rd of September 2022 and in 3 months, there are a lot of cultural learning, getting used to the people, finding new friends, and much more. And in this post, am sharing some of my experiences and they might help other newcomers like me.
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| Leaving from India |
Some of the pre-plan that we should have before arriving are where we stay, how to carry money from India for expenses, and being connected with the family. If looking for a budget hotel with an option for self-cooking then Extended Stay America, is an excellent choice. It provides an excellent deal of up to 67$ per night if the booking is done for more than 7 nights. Next is having a safe and flexible way to carry US dollars and a good option is to buy a Forex card in India with an easy option to reload it online. The last and most important preparation is always being connected with the family and we can get the US prepaid SIM when we are in India itself at a very affordable plan that includes data as well; actually, I have seen the plan cost is more competitive than the US mobile network providers.
Arriving in the US really means, the immigration officer in the port of entry should be satisfied with all the documents we produce and then issue an electronic i94 document. The i94 document will contain important information like when we arrived and how long we are authorized to stay etc and it can be retrieved from https://i94.cbp.dhs.gov/I94/#/recent-search. In some rare cases, the details in i94 may be entered wrongly and it can be corrected later by filing a ticket at https://help.cbp.gov/s/questions?language=en_US. After this, you are officially in the US and welcome.
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| Denver Tech Centre |
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| Beautiful landscape on the side of the road |
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| Public park and waterfronts |
After a good night sleep after a long hauling journey, be prepared for the next set of tasks that need to be finished sooner, like vising the SSN office, taking an appointment with a bank, and opening a bank account. One thing that I noticed is everything goes by appointment only and there is no drop in service (including the hair salon! which I will give details about below), so where ever we go, it is advised to take an appointment over the phone and then visit.
When in India, look at the city map and get used to the county and area names. This will help in starting conversations with new people in the city and also will help in shortlisting the location for a long stay either in an apartment or an individual home. Some of the shortlisting criteria are what is the ratings to the school in the county and can be found by looking at https://www.greatschools.org/ other criteria would be the neighborhood like whether it is accessible by the light rail, what supermarkets are nearby, whether it has hospitals closeby etc. Some of the websites that can help in finding the right home is https://www.apartments.com/ and https://www.zillow.com/. Again, it is advisable to take an appointment with the leasing office for an apartment tour and then visit. One good thing with housing in the US is that as soon as you are moved in, at the same moment you can start cooking the food because by default it comes up with a stove including the electric or a gas connection, and refrigerator.
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| Moving into the apartment |
Coming to the commutations in Denver is a little average if depending only on public transport, however uber and Lyft will be available round the clock. The public transport is managed by RTD and it operated both light rail and the bus, actually if we are well prepared and planned then public transport works in ease and very very cost-effective. During summer, bicycle ride would make the ride pleasant and also saves fossil fuel.
Lots of Indian restaurants and eateries are available and can be easily ordered and get it delivered to our door via https://grubhub.com, https://www.doordash.com/, https://www.ubereats.com/. If wanted to try something outside of Indian cuisine, then Mexican and Mediterranean would be a good try and some of the well-known food chains are https://www.chipotle.com/, https://eatfelfel.com/.
After moving into an apartment or home, then the next thing would be to fill up the home, and obviously https://amazon.com/, https://www.walmart.com/ etc are starters to get a fair idea and price ranges. But you can go out to showrooms and get the real feel of it like visiting the mattress showroom and trying it out, visiting a furniture shop etc. Also, there are malls where we can peek into multiple different showrooms and get the experience https://www.parkmeadows.com/. In the US, there is no concept of MRP, so the same product might have different prices in a different showroom, so we have to be careful and compare and buy the right deal one. If you can wait and the time for the BlackFriday sale is not too far, then it is really worth a wait than buying immediately. As heard all the products segment will go on an offer sale and definitely will get the best price of the year. One big difference you would see with India is that all products need to be self-assembled by ourselves if want to save money, the human labor is very expensive and it might cost more than the product cost itself sometimes!!
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| DIY projects |
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| Assembling furniture |
In my first three months, I witnessed three different seasons of the year like the summer, the fall, and the winter. When I came it was so sunny, and the days are lengthy gradually the fall came and enjoyed the view of what it really means a fall color by looking at the different colors of the leaf over the period of 2 weeks. And then the winter started in November with the year's first snow.
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| Fall Color |
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| Road, Car covered with snow |
Definitely, after a few weeks, we need to go to a hair salon and one option is https://www.greatclips.com/ which provides services to men, women, and kids. As mentioned earlier, take an appointment and then visit. Sometimes during the Black Friday sale, they sell coupons at a discounted price which can be used during the rest of the year.
If you are an avid reader and a book lover then you are covered, each county has a library with a very good collection of books for all ages, the subscription is free and we can borrow books and return them. Also, it houses beautiful reading rooms with great ambiance etc. More details about the library where I have a subscription https://www.dcl.org/
