The kids’ passports are expiring in the next few months. With Nick, leaving on his mission we were able to get an emergency meeting at the US consulate to get them new ones. The office is a 9 hour drive away. We left early to beat the heat and traffic. Many places are still in partial lockdown. As we left town, we were stopped and questioned why we were leaving town. We showed them our appointment. Thankfully the drive was uneventful after that. We had PBJ sandwiches, potato salad, and cookies for lunch. We only stopped once for gas and to use the bathroom. Here are some photos from the drive over.
These trees are blooming everywhere. The flowers are so pretty. We got settled into the hotel which ended up being a problem and taking longer than we expected. I’ll share more on that another day. We headed out by foot to get some dinner. Restaurants are still only allowed take away so we had to eat in the hotel room.
This auto drove next to us forever trying to convince us to get a ride from him. There is no way we would all fit.
We saw plenty of people sleeping on the roadside. This man even had a coat on and it was in the high 90s.
With no where to go, we spent the next day in the hotel room. It had some fun headboards. At least the AC and tv worked really well. The kids were freaked out because we killed 3 cockroaches. Thankfully we haven’t seen too many at our house. We get them flying in occasionally at night but that’s it.
The appointment at the Consulate took two hours but went well. We should get them in a few weeks. We finally left the Consulate at 12:30. With a 9 hour drive, we knew we would be pushing the 10 o’clock curfew. We still had a 20 minute walk back to the hotel and to check out. We were hustling in the +90 heat when a man stopped to ask Nick and I where we are from. This is a common occurrence. People often also ask for photos with us. Since we were hurrying, we yelled over our shoulder. We had to answer about 5 times. At this point, he began walking with us and telling us we had a great President. Nick thanked him and still kept walking.
By now, we had covered a block and the man began asking for money. We don’t allow our kids to carry any cash with them and Nick told him so. He wouldn’t leave Nick alone. I hurried ahead and told Dennis. We have people beg all the time from us and usually we can ignore them and they eventually leave us alone. This man kept yelling, “give me money” and I mean YELLING. Dennis told him to get lost. The man wouldn’t leave. Dennis started yelling POLICE. The man said, go ahead and call them, I don’t care. I thought it might end in a physical altercation.
Eventually the man got the point, right as we reached our hotel. It was intense. We haven’t seen someone so bold. Of course while all of this was happening, we were wandering in and out of the traffic parked in the road to make it to the hotel. There isn’t sidewalks to walk on, so sometimes it’s the street. A motorcycle cut to close to me and hit me with his mirror on my left elbow. Thankfully I am fine, but it added to the already interesting situation. Needless to say we were glad to be back on the road and headed home.
This is the best car we could find to fit our family. Everyone’s knees hit the seat in front of them. If you look closely, you can see Emma’s, Nick’s and Liam’s legs all in the seat backs. Ben is all the way to the dash. Liam has to sit in the middle because he always gets car sick and this seems to help.
We didn’t have time to stop except for gas and gas stations don’t sell food, so PBJ sandwiches were lunch and dinner. We were able to make good time and arrived home easily before curfew. Here are photos from the way home.
These rocks were massive.
Some people still own the old British style cars. They are awesome!
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