My MTL Experience

[lincoln81 0]

Congrats !

[~Nini~ 2]

Congratulations on the approval, Mary!

Now get some sleep! You deserve it!

[piosenka 0]

Hey y'all,

Here's my MTL experience and review(sorry if it's kinda long)....

My journey started in Toronto Tuesday night. I had a friend come with me and we got on the Coach Canada bus at 9pm headed for Montreal. We stopped in Kingston at midnight for 30 minutes. We arrived in Montreal at 3:45am. It was cold and kinda spooky at that time of the morning. I didn't know north from south, even though I had a map. A taxi driver stopped and asked me where I was going. He spoke very good english, so I said I needed to go to the US Consualte. The taxi only cost $7, but I gave him $10 for being so helpful.

The Consulate is on a side street, that looks like a semi dark alley and you need to look up to see the street number on the building, along with the Consulate emblem. There is no American flag. At 4am I decided we needed to find a coffee shop to stay warm and figure out what we were going to do until it was time to line up. We did not sleep at all on the bus. So for anyone wanting to take the bus to Montreal, I hope you can get some sleep.

There is a Tim Hortons just 1 block south of the Consulate at the corner of Rene-Levesque and Du Frere Andre. You can see it right at the corner and they are open at 4am! The employees there do understand english a bit, but don't speak it too well.

There is nothing open at that time of the morning, so we walked around a bit to kill some time. At 6:45am I decided it would be a good time to get back to the Consualte to line up. I was 1st in line! Within 5 minutes piosenka(Mary and Arthur) showed up in a taxi and went to the coffee shop thats in the same building as the Consulate around the corner. I think that it opens up at 7am, but Mary said not to go there. The coffee sucks LOL. They were 2nd in line. Both Mary and Arthur are really nice people. I had a chance to speak with them pretty much the entire time.

The doors opened up at 7:30am. I showed my interview letter and proceeded to go to the x-ray machines. After clearning security, I was given a card with the letter "B" and was told to go down the stairs to sit on the chairs by the elevator until security was ready to escort us all upstairs. After reaching the 19th floor, we all proceeded to window #9 to give our interview letter and xpress envelope to the person at the window. We then had to wait to be called back to give all our papers and was told to wait at window #14 to pay the visa fee. This by the way doesn't open up till 8:30am. I paid the fee and returned the reciept to window #11. I sat down and waited to be called again for fingerprints. Sat down again to be called for the interview.

At 8:55am I was called and I went to door #9 and it is a closet LOL. The lady I spoke with is in her 40's, short straight brown hair. Very nice lady. She had to take another fingerprint of my left middle finger. I guess it didn't turn out too well the 1st time. So I almost flipped her off LOL. She asked me where did I meet my fiancee, which I told her online and a short story about that. Then she flipped through my file. She then asked me to swear an oath that everything I was about to tell her, along with everything in the file was to be true, etc etc. I said yes, I do! She then asked me where do I plan on moving too, when do we plan on getting married and also what do I do for a living. I told her I'm not employed right now, but that I'm going to school. Then she explained about the visa and that I have 6 months to enter the USA, then 90 days to get married. Now at this point, I was exhausted and I think I heard her say, "your visa will be approved today, we'll send it out tomorrow, you might get it Friday or Monday", or she said, "your visa is approved, etc etc" LOL. She gave me a paper explaining about the visa. I then asked her if I was done and if I could go, she said yes. I left the building at 9:10am.

Mary and Arthur were done at the same time, so we took the elevator down together. I congratulated them on their approval and we went our seperate ways.

We walked towards the bus terminal, which is about a 30 minute walk. Found McDonalds, used the bathroom and bought muffins. We were not supposed to leave until 5:30pm, but found that we could get on the 11:30am departure back to Toronto, so we did that. We didn't sleep at all again, but got back into the city at 6:20pm.

So thats my story. Hope it's helpful to those who will be going there soon for their interviews.

Mary

Sorry about my delay about my review, but I am finally home and in front of a computer!

I don't want to totally repeat everything Mary said, but our experience that day was very similar! As she mentioned, Artur and I showed up around 7am and we were 2nd in line behind Mary and her friend. Both of them were so nice and it made us feel a lot more comfortable. I definitely want to reinforce the fact that you should not go to that coffee shop on the corner. The pastries are good, but the coffee was so bitter and blah. Walking to Tim Horton's was definitely the smarter idea. What was funny was we lined up behind Mary to the right of the consulate doors, and the security guard came out at 7:30 am and told us we must line up to the left of the doors. I really don't see why it mattered at all LOL.

We walked in and we were given a small square card that reminded me of a refrigerator magnet. It said "A". We waited til most people in line were through security and the nice guard escorted us up to the 19th floor. I was giggling because he only called people with a letter card to follow him and other people were trying to get on the elevator without a card. In their defense I think they were just confused and there was somewhat of a language barrier.

Once we were in the waiting room, we got called up to the window to turn in our paperwork several times. The lady seemed middle aged, short blonde hair and was very nice to us. She had forgotten to ask us for a couple documents so we had to keep going back and going through our paperwork. After the paperwork was turned in, then we had to wait to pay the 100US dollars to the cashier. The cashier seemed to take forever to open the window. I think if the cashier opened earlier, they could get the interviews done faster. After everything was paid and turned in, we were called to Door 8 on the loud speaker. The gentlemen had a great voice, he sounded like he could have been a radio jockey LOL. We walked in this closet sized room and met the interviewer who had called us in. He was younger (and cute :X) and was one of the most laid back and kind people I've met. The interview lasted not even 5 minutes. He asked: How did you guys meet? When did you decide to get married? You (to Artur) have been in Canada since 1981, correct? What did you do your first time in Chicago? Then Artur and the interviewer joked around about baseball. Our answers were short and to the point, but apparently sufficient! He said "Congratulations, you qualify for the Fiance Visa. We should finish up the paperwork for you today and send the visa out soon." I wanted to hug the interviewer bc he was so great, but he was behind the glass LOL.

Mary finished at the same time so we chatted shortly about the interview, wished each other good luck and went our separate ways. Artur's visa arrived on Friday the 26th!

We stayed at L'Hotel de la Montagne. We loved the hotel, it had a European 20's theme which included a Cabaret, Discotheque and Restaurant/Bar and the Deluxe King room was HUGE. It was very romantic and was totally our style. It was expensive at about $140 per night. It was right off St. Catherine's and Rue de la Montagne, so it was very close to shopping, tons of restaurants and a few blocks from the Consulate. We found this breakfast place, Eggceptional and we ate there every day. They had tons of yummy breakfast food for cheap. We also ate at "Guido and Angelina's" and Reubens which we both definitely recommend! Reubens was a recommendation by our concierge for a great steak and he was right! We had such a wonderful romantic time together. We absolutely loved Montreal (and didn't know an ounce of French outside of Bonjour), so if you can get a chance to make a vacation out of it, please do!

[L_n_O 3]

your review made me all nervous!!!!

the butterflies are setting in..

OMG I'M REALLY GOING TO MONTREAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(great review, btw)

sorry about the freak out.

[piosenka 0]

your review made me all nervous!!!!

the butterflies are setting in..

OMG I'M REALLY GOING TO MONTREAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(great review, btw)

sorry about the freak out.

lol... no worries about the freak out, you'll be great! Good luck and relax. I found out that we were WAY too prepared for the interview, and I have a feeling that you are even more detail oriented than me I can't wait to hear how yours went!

[L_n_O 3]

your review made me all nervous!!!!

the butterflies are setting in..

OMG I'M REALLY GOING TO MONTREAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(great review, btw)

sorry about the freak out.

lol... no worries about the freak out, you'll be great! Good luck and relax. I found out that we were WAY too prepared for the interview, and I have a feeling that you are even more detail oriented than me I can't wait to hear how yours went!

What gave you that impression?

How did my neurosis leak onto the internet?!?!

[PfcsBaby 0]

Hi Mary. Glad you made it home safe and again, CONGRATS!!!

Mary

[Melyssa 0]

Thanks everyone. I did get some sleep last night. My body still feels weird from lack of sleep, but I guess I'll get over it soon enough.

The bus only cost me $43 for 2 round-trip tickets. To get that price, you need to buy them online using a credit card, or in my case, I used my moms credit card. I bought them online 3 weeks ago and got them for $10 a piece each way plus tax. I thought I was getting a bargain until I realized I wasn't going to sleep lol.

I'm hoping to get plane tickets today and we'll be leaving either November 13th or the 15th. I want to get there before Thanksgiving. I have to go up to the airport for those. Again, no credit card, so I can't get them online, but I usually get a good price when I buy directly from the airline.

Mary

The first time I took an overnight bus (mind you it was a 12 hour trip) I didn't sleep either. I was crossing the border too and I was exhausted and stressed out by the POE officer's questions... but so glad he let me through - it was actually on that trip that I met my now husband! :-D lol