Day 75 – Monday, June 25th
Every part of this process has been difficult... but the end is in sight.
Monday morning we were supposed to go to pick up Sofia's new birth certificate at the registrar's office and if we were done before noon we could go to apply for Sofia's passport. We got to the office at around 11:00am to pick up the 8 copies of her birth certificate. We read through them to make sure everything was correct. Everything looked good so then our driver picked us up and drove us to the "Ministerio" to apply for her passport. There were hundreds of people waiting in the lobby and all the seats were taken. Luckily, as we were walking in to get a ticket number, Sofia was smiling at one of the guys that works there (she is definitely a coqueta/flirt) and he asked if we were getting a passport for the baby. We said yes and he told us to follow him. He took us upstairs, past all the people that were waiting, and brought us to someone that was open to help us right away. We were so lucky! As she was looking through our paperwork, she told us she would be right back because she had to ask a question about something. When she came back, she said that she was not able to process Sofia's passport, because the Sentencia has my Colombian ID listed as my identification and the birth certificate had my Colombian passport as my identification. (The numbers are the same but the passport is listed as PP and the Cedula/Colombian ID is listed as CC.) Since they are different, they could not process Sofia's passport. So we got the name of the lady that was helping us and she told us to go back to the registrar's office and ask them to change the PP to a CC, and when we return, we can go directly to her to continue processing Sofia's passport. So we quickly took a taxi back to the registrar's office, got in line, pleaded our case to have the PP changed to CC. The lady told us that she told me on Friday that my Cedula wasn't registered. I thought that meant that the photocopy of my Cedula wasn't notarized so I gave her a notarized copy of my Cedula and passport. (So it was my mis-understanding.) What she did say (which I found out on Monday) was that my Cedula, which I applied for almost 2 years ago by driving to Chicago 3 times, has not yet been registered into the Colombian system - so it was not recognized. We asked what we could do, and pleaded with the lady working at the desk. She told us we would have to go to the main registrar of Bogota (?) to authenticate my Cedula to get it put into the system. Cecilia asked if there was any way we could do it from this office since I have been here over 11 weeks and we needed to process the passport today. The office wasn't as busy at that point, so the lady offered to call to see if they could get the Cedula put into the system. They were able to do so. When she came back, she said that the reason it wasn't authenticated was that I have dual citizenship, and "Colombamericana" didn't fit in the space provided on the form, so they listed me as Colombian (without the American). This caused some problem at the Colombian Consulate of Chicago so it was never entered into the system, yet this was the first I had heard of it. Luckily, after about an hour, we were able to fix the issue and she changed the PP to CC. So then she had asked an intern to go get the form notarized upstairs and make 8 copies of it. After another long wait, the intern came back with the forms. As the lady at the front desk was putting the authentication stickers on, she noticed that only the first copy was Sofia's and the rest were for someone else. She had no idea who the other person was. (No wonder there are so many errors.) So the intern had to go upstairs again and make 8 copies of Sofia's form. (How long does it take to make 8 photocopies at a notary in Colombia? Ages, it seems, especially since we were in a hurry.) We needed to get to the Passport agency before they close at 4:00pm. We finally got Sofia's authenticated birth certificates at 3:45pm. Cecilia didn't think we would make it to get the passport, but we decided to try anyway. And we made it! We were able to go in right away and go upstairs to wait for the lady that was helping us earlier. We were able to process the passport, but she said we would not be able to pick it up until Wednesday morning. Again, that puts us another day or two behind - passport Wednesday, doctor Wednesday evening, and Embassy Thursday, pick up Visa on Friday. Getting a ticket for this weekend is pushing it in case something doesn't go as planned. So Cecilia asked if there was anything we could do to get the passport on Tuesday instead. The lady helping us said that we could come back in the morning and talk to one person that might be able to get it for us - but no guarantees. So we ended the day dropping off Cecilia, driving to Los Pisingos to drop off one copy of Sofia's birth certificate and our Sentencia, and then we were dropped off at home. We finally arrived at 6pm, and I came with a huge headache. What a day! Sofia took a nap when we got home and I checked my email. My travel agent had responded to an email stating that the flights are getting booked up because this coming week is ANOTHER Colombian holiday and we have the 4th of July holiday coming up next week as well. The earliest flight we can get is leaving Colombia on Sunday night and getting into Minneapolis on Monday morning and there are only 2 more available seats on that flight - otherwise we would have to wait until Tuesday. So I spent the next half hour procuring our tickets for Sunday night - in hopes that nothing else goes wrong that can delay this EXTREMELY LONG process.
While working on securing our tickets, I was also getting ready for a party at my cousin, Freddy's house. His son, Daniel, just graduated and is going to study in China for a year. So everyone got all dressed up and I put Sofia in her PJs and off we went. It was fun to have so many family members all together again. It was a very nice party. Sofia was so excited with all the noise and all the talking and all the family members that she didn't fall asleep until after 10:00pm. She slept very well for the rest of the night. I on the other hand, had such a bad headache that when I got home, I couldn't sleep at all.
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