Passport...

Wheh. My passport finally arrived. I sent away for it by mail in February and just recieved it now in July. I chose to mail it because I do not have an entire day to stand in line at the passport office. Friends of ours that needed their passports sooner have stories ranging from standing in line for 8 hours only to have the doors close one person ahead of them, to "buying" a spot near the front of the line from entrepreneur/homeless people who charge anywhere from 20 - 50 dollars to spend the night in the line up for you (you still have to wait several hours yourself). For those who don't know, the lineups are as a result of the new border crossing rules that came into effect this year. The rules on how your picture must look are getting silly also. I have a friend who needed a passport for their infant. They had the picture rejected 3 times because the infant was required to be sitting up on its own, have her eyes open and her mouth closed. You try to get a one month old to do that!

The one downside to having mailed my application in, is that my original birth certificate and marriage certificate came back to me FOLDED. As I understand it, folding or laminating, tearing etc, constitutes altering and makes the certificates void... grr. Even if it they are still valid, its annoying as I paid around 200 for new full size birt certificates for all of us, plus a marriage cerificate for Jeremy and I (this was a requirement for our adoption). Anyway... its done and I have a shiny new passport ready to be stamped in Ethiopia... now onto immunizations.

ps. I do appreciate my Canadian passport. Canadian citizens travel around the world more freely than virtually any other nationality. When we come home with our daughter via Germany, she will still have Ethiopian citizenship. Because she is Ethiopian, not only will we be confined to the airport, we will be confined to a certain section of the airport. As Canadians, this restriction does not apply to Jeremy or I.