Megan and I arrived at Immigration and began our hunt for
the person who would stamp my papers and let me out of there. The first line we
were told to wait in wrapped around the entire building and on to another
building. When following that line to see where it ended, we saw that there was
a bank ON PROPERTY. Yes, the exact bank I need to deposit money into. The exact
bank that NO ONE TOLD ME WAS BACK THERE. At this point I was ready to leave and
just get deported. I didn’t even care anymore. I said, “Come on Megan. I am not
standing in this line. We’ll be here until midnight if we do.” As we walked
back by the man guarding the door to the office I needed to be in, Megan asked
him one more time if we were in the right line. He told us that we were in fact
NOT in right line and needed to be in a much shorter line. THANK YOU JESUS! We
got in line and waited ..... and waited ..... and waited ..... and THREE HOURS
later we were let in the door to immigration.
You can probably hear the angels singing “Haaaaallelujah” at
this point, right?
No so fast.
It was like a movie scene in slow motion.
He opened the doors and we walked through with huge smiles
on our face which quickly turned to frowns when we saw three sections of 30
rows of chairs all full of people waiting for different things. In fact, there
were even people standing. We stood in a line that was moving very quickly
toward the front of the room where people were getting tickets with numbers. When
I gave the lady my papers she said I didn’t need a ticket and to wait in the
green chairs and they would call my name. Remember there are three sections?
Green, yellow and orange.
So we sit. And wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Until Megan thought she saw Jose, the guy who helped me last
time. I walked to find Jose and when I did, I BEGGED him to stamp my paperwork
and me on my way. He of course, could not because he was sitting at a desk with
his own line of people waiting for this or that. However, Jose did tell me that we were sitting in the
wrong chairs and that we should be in the yellow chairs. That was a big deal because
here’s how the chairs work:
·
Green – you wait for your name to be called
·
Orange – you wait for your number to flash on the
screen
·
Yellow – you wait in the line and as the line
goes up, so do you
So we got a ticket with a number – the one the lady said I
didn’t need – and we walked toward the yellow chairs. When a guard saw us, he
looked at our number and my paperwork and said that were shouldn’t be in the yellow
chairs we should be in the orange chairs. So we sat down in the orange chairs
with number 147, looked up at the screen and almost fainted when we read the
number, “49.” We waited .... and waited
.... and waited. I got a suspicion that something wasn’t right so I asked Jose
again, just to be sure that we were in the right line. I told him the guard
sent us to the orange chairs and he said, “No! You are definitely supposed to
be in the yellow chairs.”
Megan and I looked over at the yellow line and had we been
in the correct line/chairs this whole time, we would have been only a few
people away from the front of the line. But NOW, thanks to a lot of people who
clearly do their jobs so well, we were in the very back of the line. At least
we knew it was the right one, finally.
Two hours later, we reached the front of the line and made
our way to the window. Stamp, stamp and we were done. “Come back in 10 days to
see if it’s approved,” said the guy behind the window. “Excuse me? 10 days? Are
you kidding me right now? Do you know what I’ve been through to get to the
front of this line and NOW I have to come BACK HERE in 10 days??”
“Yes ma’am. See you in 10 days.”
.... to be continued with part four ....
