passports!

Well, as of Yesterday, the baby is official a dual citizen! we received her israeli passport in the mail, along with my aliyah visa. we seem to have conquered the first step of bureaucracy! (with many more to come...) Im still getting used to have a new baby, and it amazes me that she has a passport already... its like it makes it more real in some round about way. we are still waiting for her american passports, and i hope they arrive soon.

what this all means is that we have all the forms for our aliyah (cept babys american passport, but that we dont need until the actual flight) and will have them all turned in and signed off on by the end of the week! im nervous and scared and excited about the move... but its hard to believe its real. I have always wanted to live in another country... but I'm still not sure how I feel about the long term. Either way, it is too early to discuss that now... so here is to the next year... and all the good it will bring (bh)

nbn flights

the first aliyah flight of the summer landed in israel yesterday, and they showed a live feed on the NBN website. I watched the replay of it, and it was great to see. the oldest oleh was 83, and the youngest was 7 weeks. i cant imagine moving with a baby Mayas age. the paperwork they must have had to push to get everything organized in time! we had been debating if we should go on an all olim flight, or a normal flight... and i think we want to take the olim flight. its a once in a lifetime experience... and we can get all of our paperwork done in the airport.

If you want to attend a welcome ceremony go to this link http://www.nbn.org.il/ceremony/index.htm and if you want to watch, go here http://www.nbn.org.il/live/ There are also pictures up on the NBN website if you want to check them out.

we are still waiting for the passports and visas to come in, and beginning the countdown. we got an email saying our lift will be in israel by the first week of august. it still seems crazy that we are moving halfway around the world in a month and a half... but also exciting.

visas and passports

we have been waiting for Maya's birth certificate, so we could apply for her passports, it took a month, but they finally came in. so we headed up to the israeli consulate in the city to get her passport paperwork in, and to get my aliyah visa. of course nothing is ever as simple as it seems. we had to, in order, go to the Jewish Agency to get signed paperwork, then to the state of california building to get her birth certificated appostilled, then to the Israeli consulate. of course the israeli consulate closes at 1pm, and we arent THAT close to city... so it required two days of running around.

the first issue was my name, which seems to be consistently spelled wrong, no matter how many times we correct the paperwork. then we headed to the consulate... which is always an experience in itself. the passport paperwork was easy... our passports, pictures of her (which took forever to get) and the paperwork... and shes on her way to being registered as an Israeli! then my paperwork...

they had asked for three copies of everything... which i had organized into three packets. when I handed it to the woman she yelled at me for not having it organized right... she handed it back and made me separate it out into the three copies of every paper with each other... when i handed it back she complained again, then resorted it into the way I had originally. fun. she kept saying she shouldnt be doing this... luckily y was there to back me up and complain right back.

all in all they say we should get both my visa and her passport in three weeks. we also sent in the paperwork for her american passport, which should be in in three weeks. so shell be an international citizen, and we will be ready for our aliyah. we are debating on flight dates, but sometime mid august. step by step