When dealing with a tight immigration bureaucracy, you don’t miss an appointment.  What if your kids are vomiting when they wake up in the morning, and your required time to appear in person at city hall is at 9 a.m.?  You give them some Zofran, change their clothes, and ask them nicely to walk the ten minutes across town to the appointment.

When you finally make it, after dozens of “how much further” questions, you scan the building for bathrooms.   When your daughter starts looking green while the immigration officer is entering your data into her computer, you politely ask for her trash can (Exhibit A: trash can sitting next to me on the floor).  After your child throws up in the trash can and the appointment is over, you ask the immigration officer where to clean it or leave it on your way out.

The good news is that as of the middle of last week, all of our immigration appointments are behind us.  Our months of meetings and collecting apostilles on our birth certificates and marriage license ended with our being told to wait for a few weeks for our BSN number to arrive in the mail.  It may be the first letter to arrive in our box actually addressed to us.  With it, we can open a local bank account and purchase a cell phone.  Our American credit card is useful only in sporadic restaurants, but not accepted in the train station or the grocery stores.   We have been on an cash-only budget since we arrived.

Tuesday is the first day of school and my first appointment with the Department of Argumentation and Rhetoric.  I feel like giving us all safe foods like broth and juice tomorrow, just in case.