Don't let your guard down, part 1

That's right, you can't just sit back and relax. Never forget that in an adoption process.

Monday morning, we had a sleep in, after our energetic weekend. Had a lovely chat to Ahmed & Maya on Skype, a nice relaxing breakfast, then sauntered down to the passport office, which also houses the Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores (Foreign Affairs) - or should I say, the other way around. The plan was to get the third stamp on Sammy's birth certificate, which is needed for his residence visa, and find out if perhaps the passport was already there. This all happens from the same tiny office. With Maya's case, they'd told me two working days and it only took one. So I just assumed it would be the case this time.

The translator in Dubai had the scanned birth certificate already and was just waiting to receive the scanned copy of Sammy's passport, to translate into English and Arabic for his visit visa, which we'd been told would take 3-4 working days. With the weekend looming in the UAE, I'd had a hopeful timeline: get passport Monday afternoon (Tue morning in UAE), translations to Ahmed's PRO in Abu Dhabi by Wed morning, and maybe, maybe, he could apply on the same day and by some miracle, get it on Thur afternoon (only 2 working days, but hope springs eternal), so we could fly from Madrid on Thur afternoon (late Thur in UAE) and be home in time for weekend which starts on Friday.

So, at 11.30am, we rocked up to SRE (Foreign Affairs), to be told that the legalization office was only open for submissions from 8 - 11am. So we couldn't go past security. Then I mentioned that we were also waiting for Sammy's passport, so she called the person in charge of that who said that yes it was ready! I was now actually picturing us at home for the weekend. A very jubilant me took Sammy up the lift, and discovered that the person doing legalizations was sitting in his office, so I just asked if perhaps he could accept our submission even though we were late. Sure thing, he said. Wow, all too good to be true. Indeed it was.

He then went to get our passport, but no, whoever had spoken on the phone didn't know what they were talking about, and it wasn't ready. I had to come back to pick up the legalized birth cert at 2pm, so asked if perhaps it might be ready then. He said, yes, probably, just ask again.

So off we went, quite confident in the knowledge that I'd be getting this passport to the translator later that day, and we'd be going home for the weekend.

2pm: Birth certificate was now legalized to the hilt, but no passport, and the relevant people had left for the day, so "Come back tomorrow" Ha, there went the weekend plans.