(Continued from here)

Friday, June 18

The darn roller coaster ride continues. I got up after a sleepless night. I had a really bad headache last night and debated about taking an Excedrin Migraine, as I knew it would affect my sleep. But, I also knew the headache was bad enough to adversely affect my sleep, so I took the medicine. I slept from 10 pm to midnight, then was awake until around 6, then slept for one more hour.

I went to the Embassy at 9:30 and waited at least an hour with a whole flock? Herd? Gaggle? of butterflies in my stomach. I finally got called to the window and P, the consular officer said there was no way to give us our visas today. I thought I would just bawl. They are changing over their computer system as a result of 9/11 and are going to a system that will log in full-face photographs and fingerprints of everyone going to the window of US Embassies. Today is the day the system is completely down.

I guess that answers my worries about whether I can get home this weekend or not. Not. But, she did the visa interviews and approved them all. She took us through the “back way” and into their cafeteria. She asked if we had completed our adoption privately and I said yes. She said they generally discourage that as the paperwork can be so daunting and if it's done wrong, it has to be re-done, or no visa. However, our paperwork was in perfect order and all of the children were approved. It took quite a while to get through all 4 files, stamping everything, etc, but she involved the kids as much as possible with doing the stamping, asking them questions, etc. The boys did fine – even Tomas could stamp where she asked – but Beti had trouble with stamping in the right spot and felt really scared when she was asking her questions and eventually ended up crying. Poor thing. I really do think she needs glasses. In spite of all the scary stories we'd heard, P was really very nice.