I always knew that there would be a lot to do to be ready to move to the other side of the world: sell, throw, give, pack, fix, and store are thoughts that are always bubbling up in my thoughts and conversations. The part that I under estimated was the paperwork and it's cost.
Abu has been living in Minnesota for ten years now, which means that his passport will expire this year and that it must be renewed in person at the Bangladeshi Embassy in Washington DC. My passport expired in 2009 and still had my old last name and Sara has never had one. Sara and I also needed to get a NVR (No VISA Required) allowance so we can go to Bangladesh without having a return ticket and stay longer than six months, as a tourist VISA would have allowed. Unfortunately, my planning ahead skills are a bit lax so all of this had to be done rather last minute before our trip to DC. I started to get the paperwork together about a month and half before we left for DC (which doesn't seem last minute but it is with processing times). Birth certificates (plus 2 copies for Sara), photos (6 passport size per person), marriage licence (plus two copies), a notarized statement, from Abu, that says that our marriage is not broken... etc... etc...
I did discover that when you rush order a US passport they do not mess around! They get that sent to you ASAP! I was doubtful as I paid the extra for the rush but it was totally worth the extra money when both passports showed up a bit over a week later. The last bits of paperwork were collected just days before leaving for DC.
Hi Ho Hi Ho, it's off to DC we go!
We were originally planning to make a mad dash out to DC in April but there was other paperwork that had to be done through the mail in preparation to leaving and it's easier for us to do the NVR in person instead of through the mail, which requires passports. My wonderful mother waited, seemingly on-call, to watch Sara when we were finally ready to go.
We left on Memorial Day after I got home from my 9-5:30 shift at Regions ER but we didn't actually get on the road until 8:30pm for a 20 hour drive across country. The drive went well and we made it to Old Alexandria around 5pm on Tuesday. The Lorien Hotel and Spa was pretty great other than the snarky front desk guy who thought that he was the king of the world. We had a great dinner at a local Asian restaurant and ran back to the hotel in the rain which caused us to have to find a place to do some laundry because we were so soaked! The snobby desk guy was no help besides telling us to go to a different hotel.
Embassy Row in DC is nothing at all like I imagined. I thought it would be a long straight road with large white buildings far from the road, hidden behind foliage and big fences. In fact, like the rest of DC, the roads are curvy, the embassies are shoved in next to each other, not in a row, not white, close to the road and the fences (for the most part) are a joke. Israel's Embassy gate was much bigger and guarded. Some other Embassies were located in a different area and much more impressive but still not what I expected. We were the only ones there for a while. Abu and the man who works there talked in Bengali for a long time, working out his passport and our NVR. The man working there was well past retirement age and moved quite slowly. As the time ticked by more and more people came and it seemed to me that the old man and the young woman (who also worked there) would try and help everyone at once instead of finishing one and going on to the next. As I sat there listening to the people around me and noticing them wondering about me, my main thoughts were about how it is that I don't speak Bengali yet. Abu and I have been together for years and I still cannot understand much more than context. I actually felt shameful that I have not made more of an effort. I guess it's never too late to start!We were finally finished and out of there 2 hours and 45 minutes later.
Starving, we made our way to a restaurant that a friend said they went while in DC and that it was "ok." The main draw for us at the time was that we had the directions on how to get there. There was a great parking spot a few blocks away from the restaurant that I could have slipped into if I would have been a bit more aggressive with my driving but I figured that there was no need because we had a few blocks to get to our destination. There were not other spots and as I entered the round-about I realized that we had just merged onto DuPont Circle. I have heard many times from many people (and movies) that you always want to avoid DuPont Circle if possible and here we were: hungry and stuck in traffic. Over a hour later we had circled back to the same open parking spot as before, fed the meter and learned that "ok" is not a good enough restaurant recommendation to follow in the future. On the walk back to the car we saw a half dozen restaurants we wished we would have tried instead. Then I tried my very first Tasty Delite. I liked the vanilla but not the chocolate in my swirl cone. After the pho ice cream it was time to drive back home.
We used both of our phones GPS apps to get out of the city because we kept loosing our signal and missing the crazy turns that are not marked all that well. On the way into the city I wished that we had time to see the things the signs were pointing the way to. On the way out we took enough wrong turns that we ended up seeing the back of the Lincoln Memorial, part of Arlington Cemetery and the Pentagon. The drive home went well, I think. I was pretty exhausted and slept through most of it. Abu was great, he just kept driving and letting me sleep.
We are now waiting to receive all of our passports back with all the correct stuff we need stamped inside. If all that goes well we are done with paperwork. Now all that is left is to sell, throw, give, pack, fix, and store all our stuff.
138 days left...
