Progress Update #17

Happy Ethiopian New Year!

Yesterday was a big day for our family! We drove to Charlotte for our fingerprinting appointment (more like a suggestion) and ate at Meskerem Ethiopian Restaurant . It was the *nicest* Ethiopian restaurant experience we've had so far. The food was reasonably priced also! I highly recommend to other NC families going to fingerprinting appointments to try it!



(I'm sorry, I always forget to take a photo of the food before we eat it!)

After lunch, we headed over to see where our fingerprinting would take place. Our letter was *extremely* confusing. It said "Don't go here and don't go there and we don't do this anymore," and had an address for sending correspondence, but it didn't include an address for the place to which we were to report! So, I assumed that we were to report to the place where all of the correspondence was to go. We found this beautiful, new government building with the sign, "U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Immigration Services." When it was close to appointment time, we went in and met a very nice security guard who asked to see our appointment letters, and told us that we were in the wrong place! He just happened to have a pile of maps to direct us to the proper place. *sigh*

This is the wrong place:

Ooooohh, ahhhhhh!

At the bottom of the confusing letter, were the directions to get to this place:

It is in an office complex and was not obvious. (Both places had lots of gum on the ground. Really weird! I, of course, stepped in some fresh stuff!)

We were at the application service center for about an hour and 3 bathroom visits. After some convoluted number calling and herding of people (mostly immigrants applying for green cards who looked at us strangely!), we were called to the fingerprinting area where they wiped generic Windex on our fingers and placed them on a tiny scanner bed. Mine went very smoothly, but William had a tiny woman working with him, and she had trouble handling him!

After leaving Charlotte, we stopped to see some old friends from our church in Georgia, Randy and Martha Ward. They recently moved to Gibsonville, NC to be closer to family. They were like family to us when we lived so far away in GA. It was great to see them!

After a late-night dinner at the IHOP, we were almost home when the van died. William got it to limp home by shifting it from neutral to drive at all the stops. We got home around 10:30 PM and passed out!

Today, homeschool swim team began!