We left our apartment in the early morning hours of December 15th to fly home to Pennsylvania for a three-week visit with family and friends. Everything went smoothly upon our arrival at the airport. After paying our exit taxes and checking in at the American Airlines counter we still had over an hour until our plane was scheduled to leave. All that was left for us to do was show our tickets and passports to the immigration officer and go through security, or so I thought. However, this was our first time to fly since getting our Costa Rican residencies.
Costa Rica has all these little requirements that must be fulfilled before a minor is allowed to leave the country. The only problem? No one had ever informed us of all those little requirements. So even though we all had American passports, the man at the immigration booth told us that since our son was now a Costa Rican resident, we needed to have a birth certificate and two passport-sized photos of Devin, as well as photocopies of all of our passports and residency cards before he would be permitted to fly. We had none of these. All of a sudden an hour didn't seem like very much time! Mr. Immigration Man (I'll call him Mr. IM for short) decided that the birth certificate wasn't necessary. I gently, sweetly, and politely asked Mr. IM where in the world were we supposed to get two passport-sized photos, and he told me that he might be able to work with us as long as we gave him copies of our passports and residency cards. Unfortunately he didn’t have a copier, so for close to half an hour we ran all over the airport like chickens with our heads cut off. None of the airport offices that actually had a copier were open. We found a bank with a copier, but the teller who both got out of the wrong side of bed and forgot her morning cup of coffee wouldn't budge to break the bank's "policy" in order to help us out in our time of crisis. My wallet wouldn't even convince her to use the machine that was sitting six feet from where I was standing. As a last ditch effort we returned to the AA ticket counter and thankfully a kind worker had access to a copier and was able to help us.
I finally returned to Mr. IM with the copies, only to find out that several pages of paperwork now needed to be filled out. He and I began scribbling furiously as I watched the security line continue to grow. A dear Mrs. AA Worker came to ask Mr. IM if she should go ahead and bump us from our flight (at least our luggage would have made it safely to Washington, DC) but he told her that the paperwork was about done. We finally made it through immigration but still had to clear security. I gently, sweetly, and politely asked Mr. Security Man to allow us to go to the front of the line. Evidently he had to go to one of his superiors in order to receive permission to grant me my request, so while he went to ask we just gently, sweetly, and politely worked our way to the front of the line on our own. Never before in my life had I taken off my shoes, belt, and watch so quickly. My carry-on backpack had all sorts of electronic gizmos and gadgets in it which must have raised the concern of the screeners. Mrs. Security Woman reached for my bag once it came out of the scanner, but I beat her to it. I just grabbed it, said "Thank you very much," and we took off as she stood there staring. Thankfully no one chased us as we ran through the airport to our gate.
We were among the last of the passengers to board the plane and had only been sitting in our seats for about five minutes when the aircraft door was shut. If I were a cat I do believe that three of my lives would have been wasted within that fateful hour. But they say that all is well that ends well, and the rest of our trip was uneventful.
Our time in the States was very enjoyable (see the pictures below). We had a nice break after a draining year of language school and were able to visit with many family members and friends. It even snowed two or three times which allowed me to have my first snowball fight with my little boy. And to cap it all off, my dear mother-in-law was kind enough to make me an apple pie or two.
We had another near heart attack when it was time for us to fly back to Costa Rica; this one was of my own making. I had booked us to fly into Reagan National Airport on our flight to the States, but because of schedule issues I had booked our return flight out of Dulles International Airport. It had been a number of months since I had purchased the tickets and I completely forgot that we would be leaving from Dulles instead of Reagan. Imagine my surprise when the ticket agent at Reagan told us that we were at the wrong airport. Our pastor had been kind enough to take us to the airport and I was just getting ready to frantically call his cell phone and ask him to come back and pick us up when the kind ticket agent said that for no charge he could transfer our tickets to a flight out of Reagan that would get us to Miami in time to make our connection. Once again, all as well that ends well...
Devin's First Snowball Fight
A Board Game with Missy's Family
Devin really enjoyed playing with his Great Grandma Kaufman.
My mom, Pastor Alan Walter (God's Missionary pastor at Penns Creek, PA), and two ER doctors from Evangelical Community Hospital (the ER where my mom is a nurse) prepare to board one of their flights. Evan. Hospital donated lots of medical supplies for the trip.
A mission group has been making a couple of daily flights into Haiti. This is the plane in which my mom's group flew.
I don't think that I even want to know the details about this picture.
