Our Family Trip to the Philippines Consulate

Earlier this week our whole family went to the Philippines Consulate in Los Angeles.  We had two basic goals; one to get dual citizenship for Allan and the three boys, and two to get a Visa for me.  It was a long day, and not one we'd like to repeat, but in the end our two goals were accomplished.  Processing paperwork in any government agency requires patience, understanding and time. But doing so with three young kids intensifies the situation, as you might imagine.

Before the day started I knew I wanted to do a blog post about our experience.  But then as the day progressed and it was harder than I expected I wasn't sure how I was going to be able to blog about our day without complaining throughout the whole post.  So in an effort to be able to write a blog post without complaining I started taking pictures of anything and everything I could be thankful for. And with those collection of photos I decided I would tell you all about my day in a timeline fashion, in order to highlight God's grace and mercies sprinkled throughout the day.

4:30am
Alarm goes off.  I am tired from our full schedule so I turn over and go back to sleep.

6:00am
Allan wakes me up with a kiss, allowing me to sleep in an extra hour and a half from our original wake up time.

7:15am
We leave house with our three boys.  Boys sleep on the way down and allow Allan and I to have a rare uninterrupted quiet conversation.

8:30am
We arrive at the Philippines Consulate.  We are blessed it only took us 1 hour and 15 minutes because just the previous week my brother in law drove the exact route during rush hour traffic and it took him 2 1/2 hours.

Our drive down was lined with palm trees, which I thought was a fun symbol of irony since we would soon be living on a island full of palm trees.

The trees lining the parking lot were "purple trees".  I love purple trees!  They lined the street where Allan and I first lived after getting married.  They brought back sweet memories and I was so happy to get to see them again.

9:00am


Consulate office opens and we go inside and proceed to the fifth floor.

9:00am to 11:00am
Allan stands in several lines and goes back and forth between various windows to try and get our paperwork processed.  While I watch the three boys in the waiting room area of the room.

We had a large zipped binder full of all of our most important paperwork.  We we blessed that we didn't loose a single item!  One of the required documents in our binder was Allan's naturalization papers when he became a US citizen.  Here is his picture from that document, isn't he cute?  :)

Also sometime during this time I get overwhelmed as my inability to watch the three boys in the waiting room and follow all of the rules the security guard instructed me and watch all of our stuff.  I then take the boys to the lobby and cry in the corner.  During which time I quickly send out a prayer request to a group of ladies asking for prayer.  The boys wonder why I am crying and shower me with kisses and say "it's okay mommy".

11am to Noon
We have to wait until noon for the next step so we go downstairs to find food while we wait.  The boys get to run around outside without getting scolded.  They even make friends with three other boys, who were at the consulate getting passports.  Look closely at the picture below and try to think like a little boy, what do you see in the planters?  A maze of run ways!  They spent the lunch break running through the maze.

Trevor's pants is perfect evidence of the fun he had.

 
We have a delicious meal at the food truck park right outside the building near the boys' run ways.  I had tocilog, a Filipino dish consisting of pork, garlic fried rice, and a fried egg.  It was the best I have ever had, which I guess isn't too impressive since I am American.  But even Allan made the same comment, which his comment holds more weight since he's Filipino!  It was sarap!

Noon
We go back upstairs and Allan takes and oath and officially reacquires his citizenship.  Now he is a dual citizen.  I wasn't able to get a picture because they had triple as many people as they normally do.  Typically they have about 10 people taking the oath, but that day they had 29 and didn't have any space in the room for pictures.

Noon to 1pm
Consulate closes for lunch, so we go down to the parking lot to rest, eat the rest of our tocilog and nurse Noah.  It was a blessing we were borrowing Allan's uncle's car, because it is much roomier than ours, which allowed us to easier change dirty diapers in the back and also let the boys stretch out. 

I finally get to sit and rest.  The windows were rolled down, we were parked in the shade and there was a gentle breeze rustling the beautiful purple trees!  I took a short video to help capture the mood.  (Cue Music - Michael Buble "Feeling Good" Breeze driftin' on by you know how I feel....and I'm feeling good!)

1pm to 3pm
We go back upstairs and realize we are missing paperwork.  A wonderfully sweet Filipino lady helps us sort through our paperwork.  She fills in what is missing.  All the while Trevor plays on her desk and she never scolds him or even insinuates he is a bother in any way.  Instead she offers him candy.  She even moved her desk just so we could rescue a matchbox car that rolled underneth.  I was thankful she had experience with little kids at her desk, cause see all those items on the edge?  Easily knocked off by a toddler's little hands, right?  Especially when he was using them as tunnels for his matchbox car.  But nope, not this time cause she glued everything down on her desk!  ha ha.... I was so happy he could play and not knock anything off.

3pm to 4:30pm
We finished another step in the process and had to wait another 1 1/2 hours for the next step.  By this time the boys were exhausted.  We went back down to the car and called in reinforcements.  My dad meet up with us and took the three tired boys home.  I was able to get back to the consulate in time to finish up my paperwork.  The consulate let Allan start the process in my absence, which was very kind.

5pm to 7pm
With only me and Allan left, we finished our paperwork just before they closed.  With the boys gone we took advantage and had an impromtu date!  We walked across the street and had Korean Food at Tofu House. 

This was one of the first times Allan had Korean food without a Korean present, so we were thankful for the "how to" video being shown on the wall as to how to eat the food.

Even the drive home from Los Angeles during rush hour traffic was soo soo relaxing.  Just the two of us. 

AND.... through the morning tears and the hours and hours of waiting my makeup didn't come off!  It still looked great! ha ha.... which was fun to see since it is a new makeup I got to help endure the humid weather of the Philippines.  If that makeup can withstand a day at the consulate, it will do just fine in the Philippines.