Thursday, May 26

Today is the last day of scheduled events related to the adoption. Today we visit the U.S. embassy to have them validate and officially accept our visa application.

We started the day normally enough. We'd had a couple wake-ups in the night, and decided that the A/C was really doing a number on the littlest sinuses in the room. We stayed in the room in the morning, watching a little Discovery channel, catching a little Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs. After a while, we got a knock on the door, and the other adopting mother and their school girl had stopped in with their PC and wanted some help.

They were not getting the pop-up that you use to tell the Internet that you're done. As such, they weren't quite sure what we meant by “make sure you log off when you're done,” and they were screaming through their Internet card minutes like mad. She also wasn't sure she grokked how to compose her blog posts off-line and paste them quickly, to conserve the minutes.

I took a peek and saw that her Internet Explorer had strong pop-up blocking turned on. I added the domain name that the pop-up uses so that it should allow those pop-ups. I also poked a bit to see if I could coerce the pop-up from the browser history (even though it was stifled), but it wasn't there. She'd also closed her browser since connecting, so her history didn't contain the post-login window we see when we login, which offers a “monitor” button, that pops up the window as well. Claire went with them back to their room to help them work out some of the edit-then-post work, and poke at Skype a bit to make Skype-to-phone calls, as phone-to-phone calls from here are about $1.50 a minute!

One chore that we all agreed needed to be worked out is laundry. It's been a week since we started traveling, and we packed for just more than a week's worth of clothes. The other family must have done about the same, because they were pretty interested in getting our laundry to the “laundry trailer.” Interested enough that they suggested it.

When we were at the RRE yesterday, they were telling us of a trailer just down the path from the hotel where for about $3 you can drop off a bag of laundry and they will wash and fold them for you. You just come back a few hours later to pick it up. We figured that would be better than hanging out in one of the laundromats we've seen from the roadside. They look like any laundromat you'd see back home; rows of washers and rows of dryers, except maybe a little smaller. The buzz is it's about a buck and a half to wash and dry a load, but you gotta stand there and wait for it, and that seemed to worth the other buck an a half.

We all packed in the car and headed to the RRE to try to find the trailer. Along the way Gordon called to invite “the one from each family more familiar with the forms” to stop in and go over the stuff before the embassy visit. The moms were, so as we were approaching his office anyway, we stopped and let them out. I took Grace and the school girl stayed with us, while the moms and their new boy went to visit Gordon.

Our half-troupe continued to the RRE and we got out to ask about the laundry. They pointed to the “more messy” route we could take to get there. I suggested we ask if they had capacity this morning before lugging four stretching trash bags of clothes across some unknown terrain. We agreed, and later were glad we did, as the “more messy” way was through what seemed a little bit like a trash dump, with broken appliances and car parts strewn beside a muddy, puddle-ridden path. We made our way down, the lady said to bring our laundry back and they'd do it. We made our way back to the car and decided to take the longer road instead. It was cleaner, but the puddles were bigger. We dropped the laundry off, and the lady said it'd be ten dollars for what we had. I handed her a twenty, which she pocketed and said thank you. We milled about, not quite sure what to do, and left.

I know...way to show your American chutzpah. Whatever. Twenty dollars was a bargain compared to what the hotel wanted, and, frankly, what I would have thought to pay. We left and returned to where the gals had gone.

To pass some time, we stopped at the little store across the parking lot and meandered through. I snagged a Dial hand-pump soap dispenser and an ice-cold Coke Zero. We continued poking through seeing that like the other stores there's a little of everything. They had the ubiquitous stacks of Ramen noodles, spoons, snacks, chicken and fish in the cooler, and appliances. We noticed a toaster went for $77. For those that didn't know, the exchange rate doesn't exist here; they use U.S. dollars as their currency, so that's the same $77 we'd spend at home. Of course, at home, the toaster would cost $20.

After a couple laps in the aisles, we paid for our little purchases and hopped in the car to drive around the building across the parking lot to wait in that parking lot for the gals, who were still in Gordon's office. We weren't there but a handful of minutes when they sent a text message instructing us to come up to the office. It was a welcome relief with the air conditioning inside instead.

Grace slept through the whole visit.

While we were there, Gordon and the moms continued going through the various papers we'd need for the embassy appointment later. We also tossed a little small talk in. After a short while, we were all prepared. Gordon suggested we should just head to the embassy straight away as we were going to be pressed to make the 3PM deadline. It wasn't stated, but I think the deal is that the visa processing day is Thursday, but it's basically walk-in service, and they stop taking people around 3PM so that they can finish their day on time.

We drove to the embassy, which we'd been to on Monday, but the other family hadn't, and they missed it on the drive to the hotel from the airport last week. The other dad driving kept asking if we were there yet or if we'd passed it. Everyone was very excited when I spied it at the end of the next bend.

We went through security, with all of our baby bags, without too much trouble. We waited in the coolest room in the embassy (temperature-wise, that is); according to Andrew, the embassy dude, the A/C was out in all of the other rooms in the building, so the two we were using, and the one he used right off the one we were waiting in, were the only comfortable rooms in the building.

Claire and I went first, for a change, by happening to stand closest to the interview/conference room door. We were joined by Gordon and went into the conference room. We introduced Andrew to Grace, and he was instantly fond of her spiky hair. Everyone is instantly fond of her spiky hair. He explained the process, opened the stack of papers and began scanning for completeness. As he found each suitable, he'd initial his checklist and move on. Gordon, obviously a pro at the process, had all of the papers there an in order; which is what he'd been doing with the gals not an hour before, of course.

We signed a couple of places, stating that we were providing complete, true, and accurate information. He explained and we paid the fees. The embassy assembled a package to go “directly” to the U.S. embassy in Manilla, where the actual immigrations processing will occur. “Directly” is suspect, because unlike any kind of direct mail in the U.S., which really doesn't go directly either, the hops that the delivery service take sometimes cause their own delays.

Had we been able to use the USPS or UPS or FedEx in the U.S., mail dropped at the station would be collected in a larger station, possibly taken to a central sorting station, then delivered to another larger station near the destination, taken to the station from which it would have been delivered, and then delivered. “Slow” mail in this process in the U.S. takes a few days. Maybe a week if the item is particularly heavy or large that it forces delivery across the country by truck.

Here, the package will be flown every step of the way, unloaded at each stop, potentially not allowed on the plane to the next stop for a while, and then finally arriving at the destination (Manilla) where it will (in theory) be quickly processed and delivered. It has been the case, evidently, that packages will sit on the ground in a transit station for as long as a week!

I'm sensing a business opportunity here; anyone interested in a courier system between embassies could make a good living just hopping between island nations. Heck, done right, you could do it by sailboat and beat the current system, at times. I would think that rather than contract with the delivery service they now use (not mentioned above), they could probably use the U.S. Navy (who is out here somewhere) to courier between embassies. It'd give the sailors and aviators vital tasks, and the Navy in general a wider presence.

Most importantly, it could completely speed my package along! Alright, it's too late for my package, but someone's package in the future. Maybe even my package on the way back.

Oh, and for those keeping score, Grace was awake for much of the embassy goings on, but quietly observed, and then fell asleep as we stood around waiting.

After leaving the embassy, Gordon gave us a little island knowledge, pointing out that most of what we saw there, all of the Payless stores, and many of the other structures, and probably most of the construction on the islands was done by one guy, Jerry. Humorously, and certainly without any kind of stereotyping, my mind went right to some kind of wiseguy reference...feel free to make your own.

In addition to representing local mafioso (I don't know that's true), Jerry also hosts a weekly party at one of the other little islands where he owns half the land and structures. Gordon invited us on Jerry's behalf, and then said he'd call to make sure and let us know if it was groovy for us to join in.

We thanked him again and parted company. We headed back across the island, destined to retrieve our laundry. We dropped the other birthmother and their new son at the hotel as we passed, as he was feeling a little cranky. The five of us continued to the laundry trailer to collect our clean clothes. I mused that while our laundry was separated when we dropped them off, we didn't really make it clear which was whose, so I suspected that they might combine the loads and we might have to do a little sorting when we got back.

They had combined the loads, we learned as we collected what was three bags instead of the four we dropped off. A quick peek through the plastic bags showed that sure enough at least some of the laundry was intermixed. The laundry lady also gave a breakdown of the costs, saying it was an extra load than they thought, and since we hadn't provided soap they had to charge us for it, so it worked out to be twenty dollars after all.

As we drove back to the hotel, we chatted about food. Between that and a bit that Gordon had said about how the hotel's restaurant having really good pizza, an impromptu pizza party was planned. We got back to the hotel intent on sorting the laundry, doing a quick clean-up, and then regrouping in the restaurant.

We found that their birthmother had stopped by for a visit moments after we'd left. We quickly sorted our stuff into different stacks and started back to our room. Dinner was downgraded to “tentative,” pending the outcome of their unexpected visit. A short while later we received a phone call on the hotel phone, and dinner was on, and we'd meet in the restaurant shortly.

The pizza was pretty tasty. They ordered a couple pizzas, pepperoni and plain, and we ordered a small “supreme,” with pepperoni, beef, onion, and mushrooms. The mushrooms were canned, of course, but the crust was pretty flaky, and the pizza well-cheesed and spiced. We chatted and bantered for a while and turned in.

Grace slept through most of dinner.

We returned to our room, fed Grace, and turned in. She eats throughout the day, of course, but she wasn't really awake or hungry at dinnertime, so we had to feed her after.