My receipts will go on and on...

I've been listening to too much Celine. The title of today's blog was inspired by the never ending Celine Dion love song from the Titanic. It's all coming back, it's all coming back to me now.

Today I had to finish the receipt process. First, I did all the photocopying at our office. Not a problem. Then I had to go back to the airport. First, to find my Immigration Buddy. Of course, he was on the Arrivals side of the wall. So the first challenge was to charm the guy in the sunglasses standing at the partition. He didn't like me poking my head through the window to see if Immigration Buddy was at the table or not. So I had to put up with a bit of gruff from him, first. Why, oh why, do some men here insist on wearing their wrap around sunglasses even inside?!

Anyways, I had a fist full of passports and photocopies, which was sufficient evidence to convince the guy to let me through the door.

Immigration Buddy seemed happy to see me. So he kept me there a long time. It seemed he was doing everything in his power to keep me there for as long as possible! Grrrr. He even mentioned at one point that I should stay there with him, and call someone else to come and pick up the receipts! One of his friends there was looking at me and commenting on how I would be a good wife in his tribe because I'm tall. I think Immigration Buddy shut him up pretty quickly, because he wanted to keep me for himself! There are disadvantages to being tall in this country, I tell you!

Anyways, Jackie had been waiting in the truck for me (we had been out for some other things, as well), thinking that I just had to go into the office and drop off a few photocopies. I wasn't so optimistic... but Jackie waited in the truck anyways. Eventually, after about 20 minutes, she decided to come in and see what had happened to me. Maybe she was actually concerned that Buddy had actually stashed me in some closet somewhere for safe keeping...

Eventually, though, I did end up with all the receipts. And I do give the guy credit - he did have an awful lot of papers to sign to get all of this stuff done. After a total of 4 hours between yesterday's visits and today's, I walked out of there with 21 pieces of paper, and a marriage proposal, and I had given him 28 peices of paper and $455. All just to register the work team who came for 2 weeks!