In my few years here in the USA, I have seen big cities and small. I have lived in cities of 10,000 people but close to a metropolis and visited towns as small as 500 away from everything except the cows.
Today (Thursday) I must report this has been an incredibly long and tiring day. Today, I had to get my passport renewed at the Philippine Consulate Office in Chicago, Illinois. The post for Friday will go over the lovely joy at the office and what to do and avoid so that you will not get a repeat performance of our day.
So with that in mind, this is how our day went.
To start it off, we woke up a bit late. The clock said 8 am so we had to rush and get ready. We were tired from staying up until 1 am making certain I had every paper they could ever ask for as a “2 hr 36 min” drive as according to Yahoo meant we did not have the luxury of coming back for forgotten papers. So now we raced to get ready with all of the papers ready and food for the day packed. Off we went to that big city called Chicago.
Initially, the drive wasn’t that bad until we got a little of the way into Illinois. Whoever planned the road construction did not give a great deal of thought to the sequence of work. (Goryo’s on the road complaint.) What it did accomplish is to massively slow us down. The 2 hours became a near 4 hour trip to get there. Let me say trying to navigate downtown Chicago during the lunch rush hour is not fun for two who are geographically challenged. (We get lost easily.) But we got there.
My hubby joked that the 4 hour drive would be met by a 20 minute meeting and process. He was hoping that but he did not know how the Philippine Government works. Yup, it doesn’t matter that they are in the USA. They are just as slow here as they are back at home. Let me summarize it by saying I was quite frustrated but I reminded myself that it is best to be kind and nice and things will go faster.
Finally, we were done and out of the parking garage at 3:30 pm. I was not thrilled the bill for parking equaled our weekly grocery budget. The purpose of the trip was fulfilled and we were on our way into…Chicago rush hour traffic. We met the 7-3 crowd going home from work on the roads and those who got done at 4 pm and 5 pm and 6 pm…
Heck, it took us 2 hours to go 20 miles and 2 hours and 45 minutes to get the heck out of Chicago itself. We had to stop and go to the bathroom because the traffic jam was so long and boring. 7.8 miles in 30 minutes is a miserable pace. But after a 4 hour and 30 minutes to get back home, we reloaded, packed our bags so we could drive another 3 hours and arrive at 11:20 pm to say “Happy Birthday” to Goryo’s Mom.
Hay nalang, what a day. Now you partially know what has taken me so long to update my blog. I’ve been to Chicago now. I prefer living with the cows hehe.
Anah
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thanks for visiting my site Anah. ganda ng site mo, tapos English pa jud. di man ko kabalo mag basa og english oi, grade 1 ra man gud ko. by the way i added you to my my blogroll already “mga higalang bloggerista” just check it out. hope i will have a place here too in your nice home. thanks for visiting and merry Christmas to you! aw naunsa ba. hehehe maayong adlaw. happy blogging.