More visa craziness

When Erik called the Hennepin County courthouse in Minneapolis last Friday to obtain another copy of our marriage certificate, he was told on the voice recording that they have birth certificates dating back to 1853, and marriage certificates back to 1903. That's impressive.

Not so here, at the clinic where our kids were born. I called this morning to see if I could get another copy of the kids' birth certificates. I was told that they have birth certificates dating back to when Megan was born, and record of birth dating back to March 2000 (Ethan was born February 23). This clinic has only been open about 10 years, so I can't imagine they are all that loaded down with records. I am baffled as to why they felt the need to purge already. Thankfully I have a copy of the original, from which they said they could issue a new birth certificate.

Why these new copies you ask? Oh well, it's just another step in the craziness that is our visa process. We found out last Thursday that to do this last step (hopefully) in getting our visas, we need original copies of our marriage and birth certificates. The problem is, we appear to have left those in our shipment, which is still in Singapore.

So another $100 to process and ship a marriage certificate from Minneapolis to Rochester to China, and a taxi ride across town to the hospital later, we should have what we need in time for the last processing stop. The message it seems we're getting is, "You have to REALLY want to live here." Well, we do. So on it goes.