She's an american girl

We got back late last night from our four hour drive to Monterrey to file the papers for Charlotte's Consular Report of Birth Abroad.

It was a big day for her because she is now an American citizen! She received her CRBA yesterday afternoon and we will get her passport mailed to us in about three weeks or less. The day was very similar to the one we spent in December 2004 when we took her brother to get his papers filed in Paris, except there were a few extra hoops to jump through.

I needed all the papers I brought I brought and more. I have to say that proof of citizenship is much harder in Mexico than it was in France. I had an entire bag loaded with paperwork. Unfortunately I had a brain lapse and had completely forgotten my medical folder for my pregnancy with all of the hospital papers in it and all of the sonograms. All I had to do is look at that photo I did of the stuff stacked on the desk to see that it wasn't even in the photo. Fool! The only thing I had was crib card because it was stuck in her baby book and a lot of photos of a very huge baby that looked nothing like a newborn because she was gargantuous. The clerk taking my papers sighed and said "you really need some more proof than this" and I scrambled about all nervous digging through my notebook where I keep all my very important papers in sleeves. There was nothing! Suddenly the clerk spied Little S's CRBA and said "hey THAT! Is that your son's ?" and it was thanks to having this paper with us that Charlotte got processed without too much fuss. As the agent who took our sworn oaths said (yes it's that official--you have to raise your right hand a lot), "I'm going to assume that our colleagues in Paris did their job" and he only asked two or three official questions like "where was I born?" and "where was my daughter born" and that was it. The funny thing was that the consulate experience in Paris was much less invasive and there was no proof of citizenship required on my part.

Charlotte didn't get her Social Security number and card because evidently you need to bring your own Social Security card and present it--a memorised number won't do. I haven't kept track of my card so much since I moved to France because I never need it. The agent was shocked that I didn't have it on me. And then for some odd reason I needed to bring Charlotte's Mexican vaccination booklet. It's just a book with a few signatures and penciled in dates, not at all official looking so it seemed totally arbitrary to demand it but in Mexico this card is really important. Who knew! We will have to do the Social Security card in Florida this Summer I suppose. The other funny thing was that they told me I had filled out the wrong form and they gave me the form in Spanish which took me a looooong time to fill out. In fact most of the agents and personnel were speaking Spanish, like the guards and the people who take your personal items. They were trying to explain to us what the procedures were for entering the building and we were a little confused and got reprimended by a guard in Spanish for standing in the wrong spot. The agents were pretty much bilingual but a few had really bad English and I kept straining to understand because the accents were thick and they kept missing articles. I should have better Spanish I know but in the consulate I think everyone should be bilingual and have a good level of English and Spanish. These are such coveted jobs that if you aren't bilingual what are you doing there? That's just my opinion.

Otherwise everyone was nice except for the one guard and the whole thing took about two hours. Then we were given the choice of coming back in the afternoon to pick up the official CRBA paper and we did because it was one less thing to have to worry about getting mailed.

Seb did all the French papers in Mexico City for Charlotte and had such an easy time. They even gave him a coffee to drink while he chatted with the agent, mostly about life in Mexico and the economy. In ten minutes everything was done and we didn't even have to be there with him. He was teasing me about how anal retentive strict the Americans are with things like this.