Visa Approved!

Last night Sam did not sleep well at all... he woke up every hour or two all night long. Luckily Joey managed to sleep through it all and surprisingly enough, they both woke up in a really good mood. Sylvia and Jaime picked us up at 8:00 as planned and we went straight to the ICBF office to pick up the Article 23 and complete a survey about our adoption experience. Josh and Sylvia went in while the rest of us waited in the van. As part of the survey, they asked for detailed information about how much we paid and who we paid the money to. I wasn't expecting them to ask us for that information so we went from memory and everything was fine but I don't like surprises so I wish I would've known that we were supposed to bring that information with.

After ICBF, we stopped at a photo place right outside the Embassy to get Sam's visa photo taken. It took them almost 15 minutes to get a photo of him because he kept smiling and this is one of those times where the photographer did not want him to smile. I think he was just in a really goofy mood and probably overtired because he just kept giggling, which made us all giggle which made him giggle even more. It was great! After that, we went to the Embassy and were able to bypass the long line of people waiting to get in (I think that was partly because we are Americans and also because we are adopting but I'm not quite sure). We waited about 15 minutes and then were called up to the window so the immigration officer could review all of our information. Then she asked us to go to the next window to pay for the visa which was $400. Then we waited another 15 minutes for them to call us up again to tell us that the visa has been approved and we can pick it up on Wednesday at 3:30. It was so easy and not stressful at all... and both Joey and Sam were on their best behavior which was a huge relief.

Once we were done at the Embassy, we stopped by an American Airlines office to change our reservations to Thursday. We knew there was going to be a $215 change fee per ticket so we were hoping to persuade them to waive the fees but they were only willing to waive one of the fees so we still ended up paying $430 to change our tickets but I guess that's better than paying $645. So we are leaving Thursday morning at 7:35 am and were told to be at the airport 3 hours early which means we will need to leave the hotel by 4:00 am! We are scheduled to arrive home at 9:50 pm so it will be a very long day but we can't wait to get home.