I knew others had tried to get in for earlier fingerprint appointments. Some were successful and some were turned away at the door. I knew we had to take a chance because it can take up to another month before we receive the approval. We didn't want to wait another 2 months before our dossier would be able to be sent into Holt, so we gave it a shot.
We arrived at the Department of Homeland Security building around 9:55am. The first two security guards were pre-occupied and actually didn't ask us any questions. The one guard was talking on his cell phone and the other security guard was signing for a Fed Ex shipment. The guard let us both go through and told us to have a good day. YES! We made it through the first barrier.
Next, we had to stand in line to get our "number" for the wait. This woman wasn't so happy, so I let Brad talk. We let her know we didn't have an appointment for this day but really were hoping to have our fingerprints taken. She warned us we would have to wait. We said, "fine". She warned us it would be over an hour. We again said, "fine". We received the clipboard and paperwork to complete and were told to go upstairs to the waiting room.
YES! We were in!!! I had the biggest grin on my face!
We headed upstairs into a large room. There were 3 televisions there, streaming CNN. We filled out the paperwork and then waited. We watched people and listened to conversations. We waited and just about the one hour mark, our pagers lit up! We were on our way to get fingerprinted within one hour. Woohoo!
We headed back downstairs and were both done within 10 minutes. I just couldn't believe it. They were already electronically sent for approval. We saved at least a whole month earlier to bring our son home from Ethiopia and we couldn't be happier.
After a mass text message to everyone who was praying for us to get in, we were looking for the Ethiopian restaurant we saw last year after the fingerprinting appointment. After some driving around and frustration, we found the restaurant. We went in and ordered some take out of injera and doro wat. We knew Muluken had this while in Ethiopia and he loved it. We were wondering if he still liked it or if we had 'americanized' him too much.
We warmed everything up for dinner that night and served it to the kids (Brad and I passed). Muluken's first big bite made his eyes water ~ a little too HOT! But, he drank a big glass of water and kept digging in. Cassie tried everything on the plate and liked most of it. Jordan looked, smelled, and passed. She said she was taking her Mom's side on this. :) Noah tried a little bit. He liked the chicken but the injera was a little bit too much for him. (Brad's description of injera: a sponge filled with vinegar!)
Overall, Muluken LOVED it! He ate so much and finally said that he was stuffed. He got up on Thursday morning and asked for some more of it for breakfast. Brad let him but there were no other takers.
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