It works! [US Passport]

Here is the first – of hopefully many – stamps in my US passport:

If you are wondering why this is exciting me – the answer is a little complicated.  You see, I only became a US citizen ~10 days ago.  I received my US passport only 5 days ago.  All of which was a little stressful considering I had a business trip to Sweden scheduled for, well, now.

To complicate things further – my air travel was all booked using my (still valid) Australian passport – but as I am travelling in and out of the US I need to use my US passport.  Despite doing all the right paper work – and updating my information everywhere – I was still nervous about this whole process.  And I packed both my passports, just in case some airport had records of my old passport and not my new one.

Or – at least that is the story I told myself.

As I have travelled over the last 24 hours I have become acutely aware of the fact that I just can’t believe that I am now an American and that this all works.  I have gone through multiple immigration points – and have only ever produced my American passport – and have had no problems.  But at each and every point there has been an expectation that the person on the other side of the table would look at the passport and say “No, you can’t be American – where is your real passport?”  It is an irrational thought – but it turns out that it is there none the less.

So here I sit in a Swedish hotel looking at my US passport, with the primary thought in my mind being “It works!”.

I suspect I will continue to travel with both passports as a general best practice – but hopefully over time I will get more comfortable with producing the US passport when asked.

Except when I travel to Australia.  That would be problematic 🙂

Cheers,
Ben