Tuesday, April 2, 1996 - Our appointment for the U.S. Consulate was on Tuesday morning. We met in the upper lobby again, and walked out the north entrance and about a block to the west, to the U.S. Consulate building. It was kind of fun to cut the line and go on in. (My tax dollars hard at work)

There had been some question about whether we'd be allowed to take photos and video, but we decided to bring our cameras along anyway. And once we reached the examining room, we were freely allowed to film and tape anything and everything.

We were escorted up a back stairway into a room with no windows, clearly designed especially for groups of people with babies. It had several couches, a number of chairs, a crib, and several toys for babies. There were also a couple of desks and tables.

The first question our examiner asked us was where our agency rep was. However, they had gone with the one family to get another baby, so we didn't have one with us. I knew I was going to like our examiner when his response to this was, "Well, you got gypped."

He proceeded to lecture us about taking good care of our passports, and warned us that he could be very mean if we lost ours or had it stolen, and he had to replace it. (and I believed him!)

Then he interviewed us one by one. He asked people what they did for a living, what kind of child care arrangements they had made. He asked for details about the circumstances of the child's abandonment and adoption, and acted somewhat curmudgeonly. But I could see that underneath his gruff exterior, he was really a softy, and I didn't worry about any of our VISA applications being approved.

While he was interviewing families, another woman was processing the adoption paperwork packets we had received, ripping the pages they wanted out, and putting these together with our medical exams and VISA applications.