D got back yesterday evening with the documents. It was a rough trip all around. He said the van was acting up quite a bit again. He had to pull over 3 times on the way there to restart the engine because the transmission kept shifting out of 4th and the check engine light would come on. Then, when he finally got there, they told him it would cost twice as much as it should have cost! This is because there were 2 notarizations and 2 certifications per document and both had to be Authenticated. One of those was the one they refused to Authenticate before, mind you. Oh, it's a good thing he went and not me because I might have blown a gasket about that! So, 60 Euros became 120 Euros. He didn't have quite that much cash, so he had to visit an ATM. The good news is that they were already done Authenticating by the time he was back from getting more cash. At least something went smoothly with this government! ;-) On his way home, the exit that he needed was blocked off and he had to take a long detour through Köln, which is never fun. But, he eventually made it home!! :-D
He had a work trip that he leaves for today at 4 and will be gone for the next day or 2. I didn't want to wait that long, so I went this morning. After I dropped DJ off at school, I took L & N to Frankfurt. The drive there was uneventful and smooth, which is always good! As is typical around here, parking was scarce. We actually ended up parking at a University Clinic 0.7 km away. It may have been the most run-down parking garage I have ever seen! It looked like they just ran out of money about half-way through and stopped. But, it worked. I had to carry N in his heavy stroller up far too many stairs, but at least I can check "weight training" off the list for today. ;-) L did surprisingly well walking to the embassy! Usually she hates to walk, but this time she was twirling and skipping along almost faster than I could keep up.
I don't know why, but for some reason, I was expecting an embassy with many different offices to navigate and a decent amount of people, but not many where I needed to be. I couldn't have been more wrong. For the embassy being fairly large and it serving many regions of Germany, it seemed to me that they just liked to be crowded. They had 1 room. ONE! It was not much larger than our living room. Along one wall, they had 6 windows labelled with their respective purposes (2 for Visas) and then they had a few chairs lining 2 of the remaining 3 walls. They also had a photo booth for passport photos and a copy machine. Nearly everybody had tickets with numbers on them. I could not for the life of me figure out where they got them! I went to window 1, the Kasse (cashier), figuring maybe he could offer me a ticket and perhaps explain why there was nobody at window 4, which I needed. He simply told me to go wait there and his colleague was on her way. Seemed reasonable enough to me. When I had walked in, there was nobody anywhere near that window, but now there were 2 people waiting. I got in line and waited with them. 2 more people joined us. A long time passed. I'm not really sure how much because I was doing everything in my power not to worry about it, so I refused to look at a clock or my watch. The guy behind me decided to strike up a conversation in German, which I could carry on for a little while. Eventually, he realized that I'm more comfortable with English, which he also knew quite well. And he's Chinese, so he's at least trilingual. People like that amaze me because I get languages so muddled up in my brain! But, he was surprised that I wanted to adopt when I already had children. He commented about how strange that was when in China families are still permitted only 1 child. I thought that was changed quite a while ago, but apparently nobody bothered to tell citizens that. But, it was nice to have someone to talk to and it really helped pass the time.
Eventually, the lady came to the desk and helped the first 2 people rather quickly. I was thinking I could just drop everything off and tell her we wanted to expedite them and that would be that. Well, she was also surprised we were adopting. REALLY surprised. Honestly, I might be the first person she's ever seen to do that since Germans can't adopt from China and I'm supposedly not supposed to be able to either. She wanted me to write the name of the child and all of that information, which I gladly did, but I wonder what would've happened if I didn't know yet. Really, it's highly unusual that we already know that too. Our adoption is so atypical it's not even funny!! Anyways, after I added that information for her, she asked where my copies were. On the website it mentioned needing copies, but I had forgotten and assumed those were only for my records since they would have the originals so I didn't think it was important. So, she sent me to the 20 cents/copy machine. *sigh* I usually carry around a decent amount of change, but I try not to ever have too much. I also think that we had close to 100 sheets of paper, which I was definitely NOT copying all of! Many of them were duplicates (or REALLY close to it!) so I copied the fronts of each different form along with the main German Authentication from 1 of them. (There are actually 2 different ones since the signatures from our 2 batches were different, but I didn't think that was important) She said that wasn't good enough. I needed copies of the notaries and the certification as well. I used my last coin, which was a 2 Euro. Most of those are the same, but I tried to get each unique instance. Not good enough. She also needed a copy of my passport and my German Visa. Those were fine. By this point, I was completely out of money! All the while, N was getting horribly bored and cranky! Luckily, L was entertained the entire time by the photo booth. She told me that I still needed more copies! I have no idea what of because I really can only think of 2 at most that are different, but she acted like I had missed 10 pages or something! She kept telling me to check more carefully. I explained that I didn't know what else she needed, but that I was completely out of money. She said there was nothing she could do and that she couldn't help me. I asked her to make the necessary copies and I could just pay her for them, but she explained that she was too busy and didn't have time to make copies. I tried asking what the copies were even for, but she didn't answer. She just stuck with the fact that she couldn't help me. Finally, I couldn't take it any more and I lost it. I just started crying and trying to explain that I drove so far to be there and this was the only day I could come and that these needed to be in China very soon and I didn't have time to make this trip again, etc. She kept telling me to please not cry, but I couldn't stop. Finally she said there was another way. She could go ahead and Authenticate them and I could just make the copies when I picked them up and that would give me time to get more coins. Ugh! Why did I have to cry for her to tell me that?!? I'm still beyond embarrassed that I did that. I didn't want to create a scene or seem manipulative, but I just couldn't handle any more stress! So, our documents will be ready to pick up on Monday. I ended up not messing with getting them done quicker, because I won't be able to pick them up until Monday at the earliest anyways. But I will be armed with tons of coins this time around! ;-)
On the way home, our exit was blocked and the GPS stubbornly kept trying to direct me to that route even after I followed the detour signs. Eventually I got far enough away that it recalculated correctly, but that cost us quite a bit of time and frustration! It also had some REALLY rough downshifts as I was trying to pass a slower semi with some fast cars on my tail. That was "f.u.n.".... NOT! I am very tempted to drive the van back and forth on the Autobahn tomorrow morning in the hopes that it freaks out again so I can go to the mechanic and let him know we aren't crazy! But, 1 thing at a time.... once I mail our Dossier next week, he'd better be ready because he's on my list. ;-)
So, all in all, a gloriously productive past few days, but oh so stressful at the same time. It's strange because despite the outward stress (and believe me, we've had the lion's share this week!), I'm still maintaining an inward calm and peace. Obviously, I'm overjoyed that we're finally at this point as well, but that's a bit buried by all of the stress and hiccups that we keep encountering. Satan may be trying to thwart us, but he will not succeed! The peace that God has given my goes much deeper than circumstances. God has been providing for us in amazing ways that blow our minds if we even stop to think about them for a few seconds. And that's what it's all about!! :-D
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