citizen

We are so thankful to report that our trip to the Consulate was successful today! Ivory's birth abroad has been reported, and her passport is in the making. Now our prayer is that it will make it in time for us to go home on July 27!

The day overall went very smoothly - we felt your many prayers! We got on the bus in Ixtlan a little bit before 7 a.m. and took that to the bus station in Guadalajara, where we then hailed a cab and took that to the Consulate. Walking from the taxi to the Consulate was a little bit unnerving, because we looked very American (obviously) and anyone with any sort of common sense would have been able to tell that we were carrying basically all of our government identification ever issued with us.

The Consulate itself was nothing like we were expecting. We really should be used to this by now, but it does still catch us by surprise every time we encounter something new. We were expecting something really formal, sit-down in some executive office (I don't know why I thought a government office down here would be different than the ones in the States), hand him our portfolio of important documents, and be interrogated about things like our marriage certificate, which we did not have an original copy of. What actually happened is that we found the Consulate, discovered that we needed to leave most of our belongings at a little hole-in-the-wall "paquetería" across the street (diapers and one prepared bottle permitted), went back to the Consulate, Grant went back to the paquetería to leave his cell phone, went back to the Consulate, went through security, Grant had to go back to the paquetería to leave his Bible, and then we finally made it in. It was nothing like the big executive office I had pictured and everything like a drivers license facility - confusing, lots of waiting, and the like. We filled out some forms, and then waited for a significant amount of time before being called up to submit those forms. After submitting them we waited for another long while before being called up to another window to talk to an agent, who, after asking us about proof of our "presence" in the United States (I guess being born there wasn't quite enough for them?) let us know that Ivory's CRBA (Consular Report of Birth Abroad) and passport would be processed and mailed to us in the next six weeks.

And then we went and ate lunch, and after that we felt much better.

Here's how Ivory felt about the taxi ride...

Lunch was delicious after many hours of waiting at the Consulate. You can't really see Ivory here but she is with us, down in the stroller. 

And here's Ivory on the bus on the way home. She did wear more than a white onesie all day but it was hot, hot, hot, and so I took off what I could for her before we got on the bus to come home.