immigration

When we first moved here to Panama, Eric and I went to the immigration office in Panama City with all of our paperwork in hand, to "register" with the government... whatever this even means. We figured that Anna didn't have to be present in order for us to register her, since she was only 7 months old at the time. We were wrong. So after waiting for over 3 hours to register ourselves, we knew eventually we would have to do the whole thing over again, with Anna in tow.

Needless to say, we put it off as long as possible. But time on our current visa is running out, and in order to get started applying for our missionary visa, Anna needed to register. So we woke up at 5 am, put poor, very sick Anna into the carseat, and headed to the city... long before the sun came up. We arrived at the immigration building at 6:30 am, and stood in line. Then at 7:30am they opened up the doors and the crazy herd of people rushed inside to form yet another line. They gave us a number. Then we sat and waited... (well, Eric sat... I chased Anna around & then vice versa). But praise Jesus, we were only #6 and were in and out of there in less than 15 minutes.

Total time spent at immigration: 1 hour 45 minutes.

Not bad at all. We were home by 9am and resumed our morning as usual! (And the city water came on after lunch and I was able to do 2 loads of wash, scrub the shower & bathroom with bleach, sweep & mop the floors & clean the kitchen while Anna was down for her nap!) Now that's a productive day! Yay!