Oh no! Traffic ticket adventure

Well, yes, I think I need to watch my speed while driving!
The other day I got stopped by the police for going to fast with my car and I didn't even realize that I was going that fast!!! :(
I was driving in Mountain View, on Shoreline Blvd crossing the Central Expressway bridge... and when I stopped in a red light I heard a knock on my window, and there he was, a policeman who made me pull over on the curb.
I was wondering what had I done, but he promptly told me:
Officer: Do you realise that you were going about 52 miles per hour in a 35 zone?
Me: Oh, really! I am sorry, no I did not realize
Officer: Well, that was way too fast, so i am going to have to give you a ticket.

Yes officer, I saw the speed limit sign but I didn't see you! 

I didn't complain, I was literally shaking, I was so nervous I hardly could speak, my hands did not leave the steering wheel just in case (well, in America you never know, and you hear all these stories...). To tell the truth the officer was very nice and he seemed truly sorry for giving me the ticket, but he did anyway, in the end, I had broken the law...

And now what? Well, there are several options, but this is what I did.

The officer gives you the ticket but there's nothing you can do until the official notification arrives in your mail, this is likely to happen abouThe t 3 to 4 weeks after the offense is commited.  Once you get the notification you have several options:

Option # 1: Pay the fine
In my case, the fine was over 400 dollars, so I decided no to opt for this option and try with option number 2.

Option # 2: Visit the judge, declare yourself not guilty and go to trial 
This was also not an option for me because the officer had me on a radar. If you go to trial and your are found guilty you need to pay the whole fine and also the trial expenses. So I decided that this option wasn't for me and decided the try option number 3





Option # 3: Visit the judge, declare yourself guilty and accept whatever the judge says:
So, with my notification in hand, I headed to the Santa Clara County Court to schedule an appointment with the judge.
The day of the appointment I was very anxious, I begged my husband to go with me. We got there 20 minutes ahead of time and there was already a lot of people by the door behind which my judge was supposed to be.
5 minutes before the appointment the bailiff came out and gave us some instructions such as turn off the phones, be silent, he also told us that the judge would call us one at a time and we had to walk to the platform to speak to him. There was also a Spanish interpreter for those who felt more comfortable speaking Spanish.
As my last name starts with a B, I was called about the forth in line, I went to the podium and the judge read the charges against me, and asked me if I was guilty and if so, what would I want to do. I said, "I am guilty and I'd like to go to traffic school, your honor" (the ones before me said so and their fines were reduced a lot). The judge seemed happy with my decision and he reduced my fine from 430 usd to 177 usd and the traffic school promise. So I left the court happy enough, half an hour of my time had saved me almost 300 usd. 

If you are wondering what is the traffic school thing, well, the judge seemed to want everybody who had infracted going to traffic school, but ever if he wouldn't ask it, it is recommended to go.
If you are caught comminting an offense against traffic you earn a point in your driving record, this is a negative thing, and according to the officer that stopped me, when you have 2 points your insurance increases dramatically. One way to get rid of the point (or hide it because the point is still there but it's hidden) is going to traffic school.
Traffic school can be done online, once you register you have access to their system where you read the traffic regulation and watch some videos and answer test questions afterwards. It's long and annoying, but it's doable in about 8 hours of your time... yes, that long!

More on points system for California:
http://www.dmv.org/ca-california/point-system.php

How to meet people in a new place... or how to be constantly out of your comfort zone :P

Once you arrive to a new country one of the things you need the most is meeting people, making friends. It's important to build your little family, it gives you a sense of belonging and really comforts you on the times when you feel homesick and lonely.

Before leaving my home town I just looked for groups in Facebook to find out if there was a Facebook group of people of my own country living in the Silicon Valley area. There was one, and there just happen to be a post of a girl who had just arrived to the area, looking for new friends.

I contacted her,  I told her we would be there in a couple of months and that maybe we could meet up then. She was nice and explained to me some things about the area...  When we arrived a few months later we met. Today we are still good friends.

Once here, I decided that I had to meet more people. As I have a daughter it was an easy path to try to find a group of people who also had kids around her age, and then it was when I discovered Meetup.

Meetup is a website where you can find all kinds of groups, think of any hobby or interest and I'm sure you'll find it in there! Parenting, playdates, sports, languages, hanging out... whatever...

You basically join the groups you are interested in and look at its calendar of events, and you can join whatever event you are interested in going. Some of the groups charge you a little fee to help cover the expenses of having the group (group starters have to pay Meetup an annual fee).

In the beginning I joined a group called Expat parents in the Bay Area and also Bay Area Babies... The friend I mentioned before whas a member of one of these groups and she came with me to the first meet up, but afterwards I was on my own. 

After having attended to a couple of playdates of these groups I was ready to move to the next level, and join other kinds of groups based on other things, not only parents groups, and this way I found very nice groups and made good friends:

South Bay H4 Visa Holders support group

If you have an H4 Visa, you are not allowed to have a paid job, so if you don't have kids or they are in school you have a lot of free time and sometimes it's difficult to cope with that (some of you might think I'm crazy, but not having a job can be devastating if you don't find yourself a routine and people to spend time with). 

So when I found this group I was very happy and felt very comforted. They organise trips, lunches, coffees, sports activities during the day, while the spouses are at work and kids are at school. 

What I found here was also an escape from maternity. I was with people that had other conversation matters other than kids. 

Bay area women midweek hiking group

I really like hiking and going to the woods and mountains, and in this group I found a group of women with this same hobby. They meet once or twice a week and go for a hike. They cover the full Bay Area, and sometimes meet in the north and other times in the south. I discovered beautiful places with this group and then I take my husband and daugther there on weekends. 

The Bay Area international French speakers

I joined this group very recently and I am loving it so far. They meet different times of the week to practise French. 

Before my Californian life I used to work in a French company and practised my French on a daily basis, but since I got here it became rusty. That's why I looked for a French group and found this one... I feel I am going to make a good friend  or two in this group.

Meeting new people or going to meetups at a certain age puts you totally out of your comfort zone, constantly, and this has changed my personality. 

In Barcelona, where I am from, I've had the same friends for ages and I very rarely met new people. These last 2 years have been crazy and I have met as many people as in my whole previous life, and what's most intersting, people from everywhere in the world. This really opens your mind and changes your view of the world. 

I would recommend everybody to join a Meetup group, even in your own city... it really makes you a more outging person, and that's always a good thing.

The "Buying a Car" Experience

One of the first things we had to do when we got to California was getting a car. You are nobody here without one. Public transportation doesn't work fine and also doesn't take you everywhere. There was no point in extending our rental car any longer than strictly needed.
So, we headed to the Stevens Creek area where we had been told there were tons of dealerships... and that was true!

In our country if you want to buy a car (or any other thing) you go to the dealership (or any other store), ask for the price and if the price is right you go ahead and buy it.
Well, here we thought it worked this way... and usually it does except when you are buying a car.
If you plan to buy a car give yourself plenty of time as you are going to spend between one and two hours in any dealership you want to visit.
Our first visit was Ford, we used to own a Ford Focus which we loved, so we went there, the salesman kindly welcomed us and when we said we were thinking of getting a Focus he immidiately asked us for the driving license and said we had to test it. Ok, well, we only want to know the price... no, they don't tell you the price unless you test it. So we tested it, now give us the price... no, they need to run your credit score, well we don't have any we just got here 2 weeks ago... they need to do it anyway... after that he writes some numbers in a paper napkin and gives it to us, there there is the price if we buy it and also if we lease it, and he asks my husband to sign the paper napkin to prove he gave us the price. The moment my husband signs the paper napkin, the salesman stands up and shakes my husband hand saying "Congratulations, you just bought a car". Whaaaattt? We just signed a paper napkin, it's the first car we have seen and we are not sure we even want to buy it. So I tried to argue with the man and I go like, "no, it's impossible, this napkin is not an official document... you are telling me that I just bought this car?" So the man gets very angry and goes to reach his boss, who comes very politely and tells us that it's ok, that the paper napkin doesn't mean we bought the car, and ask if there is a problem with the price and that he can give us a 500 dolar discount. The heart attack we were having just weakened and we left the place super astonished of the agressivity of the salesman.
The second dealership was Honda, and the experience was similar. We wanted the Honda Civic, and of course he didn't give us the price, we had to test it again which we did, and after testing it we sat with him, ran the credit check, gave us a price and told us to wait for his boss who was with other customers. We hadn't said anything about wanting to buy it, and after about half an hour of wainting, it was late and our 2 year old was hungry and tired we asked him what were we wainting for, and he answer that we were waiting for his boss to sign the purchase papers... so again we were like, well, we are not sure we want to buy it, we have to think about it. He insists about the very good deal he was offering and of course the deal had an expiration date of guess what... today! Well we left the place and said we'll think about it.
Next day we went to Mazda and there is where we bought our car, the salesman was less agressive, he gave us time to think and didn't press us, of course we had to test the car before getting a price, but once tested and the credit check run he did not expect us buying the car the second after.
 

Our new car, straight from the oven! :)

One recommendation, once they have given you the price, if you are sure you want to get this car, don't accept this first price, try to bargain. In the United States they expect so and you'll probably will get a much better price or some kind of upgrade in the car.

One thing that was really weird to us, is that when you leave the dealership with your brand new car, you don't have license plates!! They arrive to your address by mail! When we realise we were driving without license plates, we went back to the store, we thought they had forgotten, and the seller looked at us with a poker face! :P

Finding a place to live in Silicon Valley

We arrived in September 23 2013, our visa, H1B for my husband and H4 for me and my daughter, did not allow us to enter the country any earlier.
What the company had offered was 1 month of paid housing and the car rental.
My husband didn't start working until October 7, so we had 2 weeks to do everything we had to do, otherwise I would have to do it by myself and I certainly didn't feel prepared at that time.
Two things were the most important for us: housing and transportation.

Housing

First thing you need to decide is where you want to live, and that will depend almost exclusively on whether you have school age kids or not, and also but to a lesser extent, on where your work is located. And house prices will depend on the schools of the district, being a lot more expensive those houses in good school district.
Our daughter wasn't on that phase yet so we didn't factor the schools in on the decision. 
After touring a little around the different cities on the candidacy to being our new home we decided that we wanted to live in Mountain View, and we didn't know that Mountain View was getting crazy expensive at that time!! 
We had to dismiss the wish of living in a single family house as we were going to be a one income household for a while and you can't find single family houses for less than 3.5k per month.
So what was left? Yes! Apartment communities... there are hundreds of apartment communities in Mountain View, in fact they are the only way for Mountain View to hold the humungous amount of immigration that has been arriving to the city since Google decided to have their headquarters here.
We visited dozens of communities in a couple of days, we were lost, we didn't know which one to choose, all of them were resort like communities with heated swimming pools, fitness rooms and tennis courts. We visited Aviana Apartments, Highland Gardens, Americana Apartments and others, and finally we decided to rent a townhouse in Central Park at Whisman.

Our townhouse at the Central Park at Whisman Community

We chose this community after a lot of reading in Yelp even though the price was expensive, in my opinion, 2825 usd at that time (today they are renting them for 3565 usd). But that's not all, besides from the price (at least in that community, others include the expenses in the advertised price) you had to consider that you would have to pay additionally about 150 usd per month in community expenses (energy to heat the pools, trash, and other community expenses).
They ask you to leave a deposit, normally would be 600 usd, but as we didn't have any credit history in the States we had to leave one full month rent as a deposit. They also did not want to do a full year lease, only an 8 month lease, even though we wanted a year (we didn't know then that the 8 month lease would be useful as we would find a new place 6 months into the lease).

Central Park at Whisman Community

The move in was easy and the life at the community was fine, although I never felt like if I was at home in that place, the carpet, the stairs, the floor plant was kind of weird, the patio was not usable, the fear that when the lease was over they would hugely raise the rent... so I decided to give me some time and try to look for another place calmly, without rush that we had at the beginning, when the lease was about to end, but that's going to be another story.

Useful sites to look for house/apartment:

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/
http://www.padmapper.com/

If you have to consider the school district you need to check if the place you want to rent is well located:

http://www.greatschools.org/

And so... it begins!

It all started in February 2013, when my husband was offered a position in a big company located in the San Francisco Bay Area, aka Silicon Valley. 
Our life was easy, married with a 2 year old daughter, both had a decent paid job in our home country... and suddenly this big opportunity arrives.
Not an easy decision but finally we accepted this big challenge and in September 2013, with 3 suitcases and a 40 kilos box we landed in our new californian life, wondering what the future would have in store for us.

That is why, after almost 2 years here I have decided to create this blog.
I would like it to be useful to whoever finds him/herself in the situation we were 2 years ago.

If by any chance, anybody finds this blog and wants me to write about a certain matter related to the life in Silicon Valley or USA, feel free to ask and I'll try to do it to the extent of my knowledge

Thanks for reading me, and enjoy!