Exercising our democratic right to ask to vote sometime in the future (we hope)

Kate: Going to the US Embassy was not as pleasurable an experience as I hoped it would be. Nell says, "Don't make it sound so bad. I didn't have a bad time." Dinah says, "Some of it exceeded my expectations of surreality." I found it to be very stressful. The kind of stress that I can look back on and laugh, thankfully, and that's what blogging is for. When we finally left the embassy, after a harrowing period of time which Dinah estimates to be 20 minutes but felt to me more like 2 hours, the first thing I asked my sisters was: "Can we please blog about this?"

Dinah: We walked up to the embassy, passports in hand, fully assured that we would be welcomed onto American soil with open arms. But first we had to find the way in. Kate bravely tried an intimidating looking turnstile - the full body style kind like in the NY subway - only to be accosted by a disembodied voice.
"¡¡¡Chicas!!!"
After some less than dignified extractions from turnstile device, Kate had a confused conversation in spanish with the as yet unidentified voice coming from behind a smoked glass panel. It was determined that we were at the wrong entrance, apparently a passport is not a golden ticket, and here at the wrong time anyway. We needed to come back in an hour, so in the meantime we decided to excercise the capitalist tourist's right to expensive coffee.

Kate: I'd like to add that the disembodied voices of bilingual consulates coming from behind smoked glass were VERY confusing (where do I look? what language am I supposed to speak?), and that NO ONE could look dignified while extracting themselves from scary iron gate turnstile thingies.

Dinah: In an important side note, the cafe we went to was fantastic. I ordered chocolate mousse cake with orange and a jarrito of café and it was the first satisfying experience with chocolate that I have had in this country. This is a picture of me and the cake. I ate it and it was good. Back to you, Kate.

Kate: The medialunas were comforting. We needed that fortification for the dangers ahead.

Dinah: This time the disembodied voices were completely incomprehensible.

Kate: Yes, and they were speaking more loudly and insistently. I asked the man if he spoke English, thinking we were having a language problem. He reponded diffidently: "Of course." Those were the only two words I could comprehend. Eventually he said: "Hmrlahgkajrkdjg," to which we responded by showing our passports, and he waved a guard to let us through.

Dinah: It felt like the Great and Powerful Oz. The Great and Powerful United States has approved your passports and will grant you entry! Please see window 15!

Kate: But first, more security. Nell had to take the corkscrew out of her purse, and Dinah learned the Spanish word for corkscrew ("destapador.") Cell phones, cameras and water bottles were left at the door.

Dinah: We had only our wits about us.

Kate: And very little of them left, by that point.

Dinah: (chuckles)

Kate: Okay, so then there were more bars, smoked glass, more guards, and finally a special machine that you had to press to get a ticket before another guard would led you into a room where you could sit and wait to talk to a consulate behind more bullet-proof glass.

Dinah: The number shown above the window was 612. There were about 5 other people in the room, but our ticket read 714. That was the best part of my day.

Kate: We finally got to talk to somebody, and he was lovely. He checked our absentee ballot requests to make sure we had them filled out correctly, and invited us to the Voting Party on October 8 at the embassy.

Dinah: At the end he looked us in the eye and said emphatically: "We will make sure that you are able to exercise your Democratic Right to Vote."

Kate: I felt better after that.

Dinah: It was inspiring. We snapped some photos outside the embassy--this is us feeling patriotic. There weren't any American flags anywhere. It was weird. Maybe it's not something they want to advertise.

Kate: The embassy is really ugly though.