The Crappiest Day Ever/Survivor--Parenting Edition part II

As an additional challenge in the Survivor--Parenting Game, you are required to take the kids to a big city that is a 2 hour car ride away once or twice a week, where you meet with various government officials to request custody of the children. These officials may or may not actually meet with you at the specified appointment time.




Today has been our toughest day here. Although Judge Oguli gave us a 10am court appointment for our ruling, she decided to hear 3 new cases first. While we were waiting, Jessica vomited all over the place. There are no paper towels or toilet paper and very few trash cans in Ugandan buildings. Luckily I had spare clothes for her.

When our friend Carrie called the embassy yesterday, she was told that the way they are now doing it is that they want you to bring in your paperwork right away so they can begin the process, and then when you receive your typed ruling everything is ready to go--investigation complete, etc. Carrie made an appointment with her for both of us at noon.

Since I was delayed, William (orphanage manager) took the Glanzers to the embassy and left money at the lawyer's office to hire me a car to drive me to the embassy when I was done. The lawyer's staff were dubious that Judge Oguli would agree to speed up my ruling because the lawyer had asked her last week if she could do it today and she said no. I pointed out to them that this time we were asking about next week, giving her more time. They convinced me that if I missed the embassy appointment and Oguli said no I would be losing twice, so I left before my ruling (they were only on the first of 3 hearings at 11:30) and headed to the embassy, leaving them with instructions to ask Oguli for me. I didn't have to be present for the ruling--I was only going so that I could ask her to speed up Julius' ruling.

We waited a long time at the embassy. When we finally saw the adoption visa interviewer, she was very nice, took our paperwork, and told us to come back with the kids' passports and rulings. Our meeting with her was very brief. We can't get passports until we have the typed ruling.

The good news is that the the judge granted us legal guardianship of Jessica! However, she refused to speed up our ruling, and said that I was lucky she hadn't given me a ruling date of a month away, like some other judges would.

We finished at the embassy around 2pm. The kids were tired and hungry because we hadn't had lunch. I didn't feed Jessica any snacks after she vomited. We went to the mall for lunch. It had rained hard and traffic was slow so the ride home was very long. We left at 7am and arrived home after 5pm. This was the 4th long day trip into Kampala for both families.

Daryl arrives Sunday and we are looking forward to that a lot!

Jasmine has been having a good time, but it is getting more difficult. Now that the kids are with us, we have to turn out the lights very early so there is no place to sit and read, etc. Also school has begun and she is missing that and feeling left out, I think. We are thinking of having her return the 19th instead of the 24th, especially since it looks as though we won't be leaving on the 24th. If we get the verbal ruling on the 21st, and the typed one a few days after that, then get the passport and then the visas, that will take more than 3 days.