Landing in Atlanta was bouncy on the way in, but there is nothing like the feeling when the plane stops on solid ground. The plane is running late but we have a few hours before our connecting flight.

The next two hours were probably the worst of my life. Because of the length of my visit without a visa (89 days, right up to the very limit) and not doing the usual tourist thing - my passport was placed in an orange folder and I was taken for an interview. There were about 20 people waiting for their entry to be cleared when I arrived, a single desk with two immigration officers and voices that carry.

An hour later my turn came up and I ended up with officer Garcia, who, having watched knew to be a slime ball. He wanted to know why I didnt have my return plane tickets (that you don’t get till you check in on the day your’re about to fly), what I was doing in the US, why I didn’t have enough cash in my purse to last 3 months, who I was staying with and on and on and on.

He decided to rummage in my bag and look through all the photo’s on my digital camera. Not good. I had foolishly not deleted all the pictures before I flew (some of which were VERY personal). He took the camera to the back room, ten mins later he invited a collegue to come in and have a look, ten mins later he came out still looking!

Decided to look through my laptop but thankfully I don’t think computers were his thing.

Then he found my change of name documents and birth certificate and his attitude went from bad to downright sour. Eventully after a lot of typing he said..

“Against my better judgement and as its your first time here, I’m going to let you enter the US”

OMG - SInce when did entering the US depend on a clerc’s better judgement!! I really hope all the shit he has typed on my file doesn’t impact future visa requests.

I was in shock. I took my stuff and got out of there as quicly as I could to meet up with miya and Sarah. It felt like my world had just split in two and half of me was going back to the UK.

I never never never ever want to find my life in the hands of some random guy again.

The rest of the journey I was drained, on the flight to Phoenix was next to the emergency exit and it was drafty, spent the whole trip with miya curled up in my lap dozing. Next stop Arizona.

To be continued…