Our Adoption, The Great Paden Adventure, Chapter Six

At 7:30, we were in the cab, on our way to AIT. Paden was wearing his new yellow sweater, hand-knitted by a good friend of ours, Anne-Martine. It's is an absolutely beautiful sweater, and with the hood up, Paden looks like a little yellow penguine! But he was warm, as the temperature was in the low 60's, a veritable freeze for the residents of Taiwan.

We arrived at the destination address at 7:45, and the cab driver gestured to a very large building, very official-looking. We paid him, and thanked him and went into the building, but nowhere did we see any markings or signs that this was AIT. Walking inside, we found a security guard and asked him where it was, and he said "yellow building" while pointing back outside. We were in the wrong building. This is how most of the morning would proceed.

The building next door might not be as official-looking, but we couldn't tell; it was currently undergoing some renovation and was hidden by plywood-wall barricades and construction signs. Following the hand-written arrows around the corner of the barricades, we found a temporary entrance, passed through the Security Check ("no cameras, please". Too bad, this would have been a neat set of pictures.), and entered the building.

The interior was sparsely decorated and there was an information kiosk with an attendant in the middle of a wide hallway. We asked her where we needed to go, because our information indicated a "Window Four", which was conspicuously missing. She said that the Second Floor is what we wanted, and we headed up the stairs, in a hurry not to miss our appointment.

However, there really wasn't a Window Four there either, and I went up to the only available and manned window, Window One. It was at this time I began to suspect that there might be more than one "Window Four". Perhaps this was an intelligence test for the new parents, and if you don't pass, you don't get to take your kid home. We weren't passing. The lady at the window asked if we were trying to get a US passport, and we said yes, so she said, "Oh, that's in the Third Floor!". D'oh!

So we walked up to the Third Floor (no elevators that we could see, perhaps that was what the renovation was all about!) and waited in line at the first open window. Window One. Hmmm... There was a Window Four, but it was currently closed. The gentleman at Window One said we needed to go to the Second Floor. D'oh D'oh!!

So now we headed back down to the First Floor to see if we could find out what was going on. By this time, there was a new girl at the kiosk, and a door had opened up to another area, revealing a whole bunch of windows, and, you guessed it, another Window Four. Lynne stood in line for that Window Four, while I went to speak to the new girl at the kiosk. We were past our 8:00am appointment time. Some parents!!

The new girl at the kiosk was helpful and polite when I asked her where we were supposed to go to get the papers necessary to take Paden out of the country. She smiled with the smile of someone who has heard it all before and said, "Second Floor". I replied, "We've already been there, they directed us to the Third Floor." She came back with a "Trust me!", as sure and confident as Kurt Russell in the movie "Used Cars". So I grabbed Lynne out of the Line for Window Four, and told her we had to go back upstairs to the Second Floor (did I mention the lack of elevators?).

Speaking to the girl in Window One, Second Floor, for the second time (get all that?), I said we were directed back to her, and we were trying to get the Immigration documents to bring our newly adopted son back to the United States. "Oh," she laughed, "why didn't you tell me that the first time?", and took the first set of forms we hed to preview. After a minute or two, she said "Third Floor" and the case of Deja Vu started in severity.

More stairs. More cursing absent elevators. But we walked up to Window Four, Third Floor, which was now open, and handed the papers to the gentleman again and he smiled and reviewed them. After a couple minutes, he told us to wait for about five minutes, and come to Window Five when called. Cool, an new window number! The five minutes was up in actually just a couple minutes, and we were called up to the window again for the first interview. We had expected the "interview" to be conducted in a separate room, much like Lynne's interviews to get her Resident Alien card at the INS in San Francisco. However, we were conducting this interview at Window Five with the Interviewer behind a his shield of bulletproof glass. He was polite and pleasant, although I had trouble hearing many of his questions due to the ambient noise on our side of the glass. In just a few minutes, we were finished, and he told us to wait another fifteen minutes to get Paden's Visa.

Fifteen minutes and three breadsticks later (we would learn to measure time by the "Breadstick" scale), a different gentleman behind Window Five called out our names, but with the noise in the waiting room, it was impossible to hear him. Fortunately, he held up our passports to the glass which we had given to the previous gentleman, and we mosied up to the window.

This fellow was obviously American, with a slight Teaxan accent and jovial manner. He looked a bit like Jesse "The Body" Ventura, though not as frightening. He asked us a few more questions, had us sign some forms (including Paden's brand new passport from Taiwan R.O.C.) and then announced, "Congratulations, you are now the proud owners of a little Taiwan boy". Wow.

He told us to come back in two hours to pick up the Visa, and handed everything else back to us that we needed. Instead of trying to entertain Paden for that two hours (even breadstick lose their charm after a certain point), we decided to head back to the hotel so that Paden could nap, and I would return by myself later to pick up the Visa. We caught a cab back to the hotel and went up to our room to relax and play with Paden, and hopefully tire him out a little.

At 11:15, I returned to AIT in a cab, and went directly to the Third Floor (we learned our lesson this time!), right up to Window Seven as was instructed by the last agent. She handed me the Visa to me, with a STRICT WARNING that I had already heard three hundred times by various people, DO NOT OPEN THIS ENVELOPE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!!! Of course, we weren't going to open it, but, boy, what a way to fan the flames of curiosity!

After securing all the papers needed, I walked a few blocks from AIT until I found what I was looking for: a McDonald's. Okay, chide us if you will, but we really wanted to have lunch in the hotel that a) didn't cost a lot, and b) was quick and easy. Admittedly, we were being lazy, and there will be those who will say (like my father would), "You come all the way to another country and culture to have Big Mac?!?". Yes, but we needed, as my brother so eloquently put it, "comfort food". Walking into the McDonald's, I discovered that, even in the absence of a common language between people, a Big Mac and Large Fries is a Big Mac and Large Fries anywhere in the world. I grabbed our lunch, and caught a cab surprisingly easily.

Back at the hotel, we munched on our fast food (sorry, Paden, no fries for you....yet). At this point, with absolutely everything we needed to leave the country, such as the baby and all the documentation, we could really have left on the flight that evening. But we were in a strange and wonderful place, and this would be the last chance for us to see the sights until our return for Paden's sister years from now, so we thought some final sight-seeing might be in order for the rest of the trip.