Groundhog Day

Can anyone tell me when they moved Groundhog Day to January?? We seem to be stuck in that never ending scenario where the day keeps repeating itself. Masha and I were talking about Yulia's passport. When it didn't arrive again today, she asked when will it come. I told her that they said that it should be here tomorrow. She said," Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow." She got it. That is exactly how I feel. I'm sure that those of you who have been here and done this know what I mean. Tami told me that Elle's passport was sent to the wrong town and won't be here for two more days. I know how agonizing that is. We don't think that ours went there also, so we are still hoping for tomorrow.

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Silly me. After two months you would think that I would know not to assume that ANYTHING here will be done in any type of semi-reasonable time-frame. You know that great apartment in Kiev that I mentioned in yesterday's blog? Well, we are paying for staying there tonight while we are still here in Odessa. That jacuzzi sure would have felt good. Well, I won't be sending them any more non-refundable deposits. When we have the passport and a van to take us to Kiev, I will call them and reserve an apartment.

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I called the Embassy in Kiev to see if there was any part of the visa process that they can begin before we get there with the passports. They asked me to fax copies of Igor's and Masha's passports and Yulia's birth and name information and they would try to get things started tomorrow. I went to the office here at Odessa Executive Suites and they scanned the documents to PDF files, so that I can email them instead of faxing. When I opened the PDF file of the translation of Yulia's birth certificate, the one that went to USCIS in Omaha, the birthday was wrong! Instead of December 1, 1990, it said January 12, 1990. That would make her 18 and cause a whole other set of issues. I don't think that I had a heartbeat while I searched for the PDF of the original birth certificate and saw that it had the correct date. Here, dates are arranged by "day", "month", "year", so Yulia's 01 12 1990 was translated as January 12, 1990. I quickly checked the other two certificates and translations and they were all OK. We are having a new translation made. I called USCIS in Omaha to explain. I hope they understood the voice mail. I just want to be certain that everyone's records agree so there is no confusion later on. I can tell you that I was having visions of another month of getting a new birth certificate, ID number, domestic passport, etc.before we could get the passport that we need. I guess I get the message. No matter what we think, it could always be worse.

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We really appreciate the extra effort being expended by the Embassy and the great job by USCIS in Omaha. I hope that the Embassy is able to get Tami the visa that she needs in one day, so she can finish this week. If they start on our processing tomorrow, we also might make our Sunday morning flight. And I thought the next adventure might be getting settled in at home in Omaha.

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If I have a chance to blog tomorrow, it may not be a good sign, but we should have internet in Kiev, so I will continue from there.

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PS. Only five teenagers for dinner tonight. We got carry-out from Pizza City and Masha made one of her vegetable salads. Add dried fish and banana juice and it was quite a meal.