Part Two – We fly to San Francisco, and what awaits us there?
Mission of the Czech School of California is not only offer a comprehensive education in the Czech language, history, geography and culture, but also to nurture the growing Czech community in San Francisco and the Bay area. As we move forward, we would like to guide new families coming to this area and help them with settling down in the U.S. What are the ups and downs of the new adventure called life in a completely new country? You might read about all of this in our new guest posts series called “Our move to San Francisco and my life with ‘Startup Guy” from one of our moms Helena. Her original blog in Czech language can be found here: http://blog.dokalifornie.cz/
What is the best time frame for arranging everything in our new home?
We started to plan our move.. Some questions we had were:
– How much time will we need to move the whole family?
– How many days we will need to look for a new home?
– How much time will we need to set up a new bank account?
– What else do we need to arrange before we move to the San Francisco Bay Area?
– How long will the trip take?
– Where will we look for a new home, school for the children, doctors for the whole family, etc?
We browsed the internet and found useful information about relocation to the San Francisco Bay Area (SFBA). What factors were important to us? Good transportation to work for my husband, the feel of our new house/apartment, the quality of schools in town, and a family-friendly neighborhood.
The feel of our new house was the most important to me. I knew that I would need to stay home to support our children in school. They would be beginners with English and we realized that they would need more help and attention than other children.
Another question was whether a house or apartment be better for us. How big of a place would we need? We decided that we would need a 3 bedroom house/apartment to have enough space for us and our children, as well as for visits from family and friends.
Then we thought about schools. We wondered if we would need private school (because of quality) or if we would find good public schools. Then we found information about school districts and about towns that are close to San Francisco, like LaFayette, Moraga, Pleasanton and Dublin. They all had access to San Francisco by BART (public transportation, like the metro) and the best public schools.
And how did we finally prepare our Plan of Priorities?
– We prepared everything in August and we made the plan for our relocation in September.
– We organized a big party to say goodbye to our family and our friends.
– Tomas and I made a 10 day trip to the USA.. The purpose of this visit was to find a new house for whole family.
– We made targets for our stay in August: finding housing in the best school district, finding the best school, finding housing with a max. lease of 4000$ per month. We tried to just be curious when making offers on houses because we found that if you went in with expectations, you might then be sad :-]
– We arranged Social Security numbers
– We arranged a bank account. Again, he tried to have no expectations, because without a credit score you are treated like nobody :-]
– We looked for information about car leasing, because without a car in the US you are like a person without legs (but I think that in SF you don’t need a car)
– We prepared everything for our children. We needed to put them in school as soon as possible after our relocation. – We put together everything for school registration.
– We settled the work permit problem for me, because as a wife of a manager on my husband’s visa type, it was necessary.
– We found doctors for the whole family.
– We decided on a health insurance plan.
In my next posts I will try to tell you more about this and I hope that it will be helpful and useful for you.