Passport!

Yesterday I spent 3.5 hrs at the drop-in passport office at MLK library in DC, as if you show up there with all your documents, sign up on their list, and just wait you will eventually get to submit your passport paperwork.

I did this instead of scheduling an appointment at one of the few US Post Offices in the area that also take passport applications because 1) I could do this on a Saturday and 2) as far as I can tell the scheduling section of the USPS website is broke.

So I sat for several hours, chatted with a couple getting their newly 16-year-old kid an adult passport, knitted, and helped another newly 16-year-old kid complete their paperwork.

It was a bit funny how many people sitting in the waiting area were willing to chip in with much more fluent Spanish when they heard me struggling with "alta, color de pelo, color de ojos, persona por una emergencia". This family had 3 white women with increasing levels of fluency and then a black gentleman try to explain that they were going to need 2 money orders -- one for the library and one for the State Department -- to submit their kid's passport paperwork.

Do teenagers even get lessons on how checks and money orders work anymore? You have to use one or the other to pay the fees for a passport; they will not take cash.

But I submitted my paperwork and will hopefully get both a passport book and a passport card in a few weeks.