Well, the morning started out great with us being able to attend a Christian worship service right in our hotel. We especially enjoyed hearing everyone praying, especially one of our new friends, who was Indonesian Dutch. We said, "See you later," to the Novetel and our missionary friends, the Fujiis. After church we packed up our things and headed back to downtown Bangkok to stay at the Bangkok Christian Guest House. Penny had to sit on my lap because our suitcases took up the rest of the space. Although the room was much smaller at the BCGH, we were relieved to be moving closer to the government offices and even Penny seemed pretty happy to be back in familiar surroundings. She especially enjoyed seeing the Fujii's at the BCGH later that evening as they had a church gathering meeting there. We now were armed with a Thai cell phone that the Fujii's had obtained for us. And we were hopeful with guarded optimism that perhaps we'd finally get that interview. After all, the DSDW had faxed them the explanation form as to why there was another document in place of the original birth certificate. We enjoyed visiting the internet cafe at the nearby mall in the evening and were enjoying other perks, such as free bottled water. Things seemed to be looking up, we thought.
Monday, Dec. 29th, 2008
This day didn't turn out as positive as we had hoped. Penny had a rough night the night before and could hardly be aroused in the morning. So, we had to drag a grumpy teenager to the dreaded USCIS office. There we were told that the fax from the DSDW was not sufficient and they needed the original document. When we called the DSDW we discovered that the social worker dealing with our case was out for a week's vacation. But, they had Penny's file available and so we hailed a taxi and made it there in record time. We picked up the document and left it off at the window of the USCIS office. Then we went back to our hotel, hoping they'd call us. When we weren't hearing anything, we thought we had nothing to lose to just go over to their lobby and wait around. Well, we ended up waiting until closing time, at which point one of the CIS officers came to the window and told us that she could not guarantee that she'd call us anytime soon. Since the government offices would be closing down for another 5-day holiday weekend starting on Wednesday we knew that we'd probably not be able to leave that Wednesday. After hearing this crushing news Jay walked away from the counter and started crying. When we got our electronic dictionary back and I started trying to explain the situation to Penny, I started losing it. Next we went to the NW Airlines office for the second time to change our tickets again, this time to leave on January 10th. We were so thankful that we had chosen to pay for the special adoption fare tickets with NW since we could change our tickets as many times as necessary without any extra charge. While we were there Penny told one of the ladies at NW Airlines that she was really impressed by how her dad would cry. Later, after taking her out for her favorite Thai food, Penny was leaning her head on Jay's shoulder and holding his hand on the escalator. It seemed the hardship we were experiencing in Bangkok was drawing us closer as a family.
Below are pictures of the mall where we went to change our airline tickets with NW Airlines.
1 comment:
I love re-reading this adventure of yours because I was so following your story as it was unfolding. I can't believe that it has already been two years!
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