It is really difficult to juggle full time jobs while prepping for aliyah.
We are almost done the paperwork part of our journey - all we have left is baby daughter's passport, our marriage certificate, darling wife's Israeli passport, and getting an apostille on darling wife's name change document. And, of course, solving the tangled mess of getting an apostille on darling wife's French birth certificate.
Getting legally married requires two days - one to apply and get a license, and another to have a ceremony and obtain the actual marriage certificate. Getting baby's passport requires one day (and both parents have to be present, along with child). We are almost positive that we can get the apostille on the name change document by mail (working in it, hope to have it sent out next week). And hopefully, we may have solved the impossible task of getting the apostille on the birth certificate (a lovely cousin may be able to go to the offices in France and obtain it for us).
There is also the meeting with the Jewish Agency, which will be another day off from work for both of us, and darling wife needs to go to the Israeli consulate for her Israeli passport (at least one more day off from work for her, and probably more, knowing how their bureaucracy works).
So we will need to take at least 4 days off from work each (and an additional 2 or 3 dor. Darling wife) to get all of this done. This is made doubly hard by having a two year old finish playgroup at 2pm every day, and not having any days off from work till Pesach to do any of this (meaning we will risk getting in trouble from our employers for doing it). Losing our current paychecks will absolutely threaten our aliyah plans (although, I suppose, we can just move earlier in that case).
Of course, we still have to pack (a Herculean task in its own right, besides the children complicating it), get a lift quote, pay the application and ticket fees to NBN, and get a flight.
Still, it is better to revel in the small progress we have made! We're getting there, slowly...
:)
ReplyDelete