Embassy date

Have you ever been at the DMV and felt so frustrated with the lifeless person behind the sterile, grey counter that you wanted to hurt someone?  That is how I have felt all week in dealing with the US department of Immigration.  We needed the age ranged ammended on our I600A form since Mekdes is younger than the ages originally recorded on all of our paperwork.  We had been given a tentative Ethiopian Embassy appointment of 11/15, so we knew we needed to get a rush on the approval of the change on the I600A.  I called everyday this week and every day I delt with a lifeless, useless "officer" at immigration who wasn't willing to find our file, look at our file, or approve our file.  By  Tuesday afternoon, I resorted to contacting our congressman to see if he would have any more pull with USCIS.  Bill Foster did try to intervene on our behalf, but he was unsuccessful in getting our file approved.  At this point, we had lost the flights I had on hold for our second trip.  We couldn't book the flights as we were still in limbo with Immigration and if we didn't get our file approved, our Embassy appointment would be cancelled.  Things were looking bleak, to say the least!  By Friday, I was frantic and thought if we didn't get this file approved, what was going to happen to Mekdes?  I had been praying for someone to answer the phone that would actually be able to assist me with our situation and Friday morning....it happened!  Officer McCall anwered my 900th call to Immmigration and was willing to get off of her chair, find our file, look over our file, and APPROVE our file!!!!  YAHOO!!!!!  So, we are back on track---rebooked our flights and are scheduled to travel for our second trip 11/11-11/18.  Ahhh, life is good!

Margo wanted to take a picture in her Halloween costume holding a picture of Mekdes--too cute!