Getting a Passport: Not for the Faint at Heart

Time for a passport! I was (finally) able to get an appointment. Yay! The only place I could get an appointment in a reasonable amount of time was almost an hour away at the passport agency in San Diego.  Not yay! But it all worked out. My mom is great and drove me to San Diego for my appointment at 10:30. We parked in a minuscule parking lot that charged a (ridicules) amount. $11 dollars for two hours of parking? I guess that's what it's like in a city, and considering I'm moving to China, I'm going to have to get used to it. After a little adventure of fitting a mini van into a spot that looked like it was designed for a smart car, we proceed to the huge shiny building.

After taking the gut dropping elevator to the tenth floor, we got in line for security.  So, you know those little kid's scissors that are about 4 inches long? Did you know that you can't bring them into secure government buildings? Whoops. I keep an emergency kit in my purse and I completely forgot about the scissors. After the X-ray machine went off and the security guy started digging through my purse, I remembered the scissors, 'fessed up, and found them myself. My purse is far from clean, and I wanted him to spend minimal time digging through it. The security guard then instructed my mom to throw the scissors away, "just not on the tenth floor." Because as we all know,  little safety scissors like to jump out of trash cans and and poke people, but they of course can not use elevators. Anyway, we made it successfully through the first stage of applying for the passport, then sat down to wait. The passport system is very similar to the DMV, but as previously mentioned their appointment system is even worse. Wouldn't it be fun if healthcare worked with such efficiency? 

After waiting for an hour, I raised my right hand to give the little oath they give, signed a paper, and was out of there! It was perfect because we made it back to the car just before our expensive two hours ran out. I'll have my passport very soon because we expedited it, then I can get my visa!

Moving to China is starting to become more and more real!