Before heading to London, we had four days to pack in Cedar Rapids before flying to Washington, D.C., for the last leg of the Spring of never-ending travels. In fact, this last leg grew just a little longer: our five day stay in D.C. was transformed to a 14 day stay, courtesy of, well, compounded failures in planning for bureaucracy.
In February, we had packed our Chicago possessions (that we hadn't sold or donated) into boxes to stay parked in the basement of Foxwood (Mom's house), into boxes to take to the U.K., and into suitcases to take to Singapore. Now, back from the northwest, we reshuffled these possessions (yet again) into suitcases for travelling with us on planes and piles for the moving company to pack up and ship to London.
We took the suitcases to D.C., and now we have them in London. And now we've been living out of suitcases since the end of February. My firm arranged a temporary apartment for us near the London office while we find a more permanent place to live. We will continue living out of our several suitcases until we sign a lease at a new apartment and the moving company delivers our stuff. Our boxes of shipped goods have to be cleared by U.K. customs, and I've been waiting for this clearance for three weeks now. Surely we will someday see those items again, but which day? I do not know, and Her Majesty's Customs doesn't seem concerned enough to even acknowledge my inquiries.
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| Waiting to board the flight at Cedar Rapids airport. Bobby was well-behaved on the flight to Chicago and the flight to D.C. (of course you can't go direct from Cedar Rapids to D.C.) |
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| Nai Nai flew with us to D.C. so that we could all have one last party before some of us parted for London. She's actually sitting in the wrong seat here, as some rude people soon told her. |
This segues into how the D.C. leg grew from 5 days to 14. I was advised that the U.K. visa process was fairly efficient and easy. I thought my employer would take care of it all, but it turned out that the responsibility was on me. The process is actually a bit complicated. Sure, they do have a website to help you manage the process, but there are a lot of steps. I made several mistakes along the way and received little (or no) help in resolving the mistakes.
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| Bobby, shocked at how bad his dad is at filling out online forms. |
The most critical mistake concerned the passports. Christine, Bobby, and I all had to surrender our passports to the U.K. embassy in the U.S. This is problematic because Christine's only current government identification is her passport, and she needs it to fly. She has been without a valid U.S. green card (permanent resident card) for almost a year because, well, the U.S. government will take as long to make a new green card as they want, they harrumphed, when we asked them.
We couldn't surrender our passports until we had successfully flown to D.C., so surrender and then wait we did in D.C. Not having the visas yet by the date we were to fly from D.C. to London, we moved the flight nine days into the future in hopes of having the visas and passports by then. Luckily, the visas came within a week, and we got to spend an extra nine days partying in D.C. with my sister and various other family members coming and going.
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| Bobby's visa photo. He was very charming at the U.K. visa office in D.C., and he gladly smiled for his photo. |
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| The extra nine days in D.C. gave more time to Bob and Marley, Rachel's bulldog. |
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| We spent Mother's Day together in D.C. Rachel made a delicious and fabulous Champagne (the good stuff!) brunch. |
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| Say good bye to the U.S. (for now), Bob. Nothing is happening in that building anyway. |
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