The Trip to the Ukrainian Consulate, Part 1

A much belated follow-up to our trip to the Ukrainian consulate last, last week.
Well, after being stuck in traffic on the FDR for 1.5 hours, we managed to pull up to the consulate at 12:30pm- exactly 30 minutes before closing time. And... there was a parking space right in front of the door!In Manhattan. Amazing. It only cost us $95. The street signs down there can be confusing... but, that is another story.
So, we walk through the consulate door and into a tiny, dark room- about 15 square feet. There were 4 other people in the "waiting room", and a very sullen young man sitting behind a shield of bullet-proof glass with a pained expression on his face and the number '1' on his window. It was the only window.
 So, we look around, play it cool for a couple of minutes and then cautiously approach the bullet-proof glass window #1, and this young man, and Mike begins to explain our situation to him. He needs several versions of our questions to understand exactly what we are asking, a quick scan of our official letter of invitation written in Ukrainian, and then disappears to 'the back' through a secret door behind the bullet-proof glass. After about 5 minutes, he returns (perhaps he was chatting with Serhii)  and explains that the kind of visa we need to apply for is a 'Business Visa'- even though we will not be employed there. It's a 5 year visa, $140 a person, and the application is 4 pages long. Apparently, we also will not have to travel out of the country every 3 months with this visa as we had anticipated.
Seems like a good deal so we'll be applying soon. Then, after the bambino comes, we must get their passport first and then apply for their visa.
I pray this whole visa process goes very quickly and that we all get our visas on time. Perhaps I will send Serhii a fruitcake along with our visa applications...
All in all, it was a very good trip and we had our questions answered. This is the very short version. Perhaps Mike will write his side of the story and include more details about our expensive parking space, having to walk back into the consulate after we left, and chicken quesadillas.
On a lighter note, I went to the dentist this evening.
-a