Well, since I went ahead and made this private, I suppose I should at least make a new post right?? I decided to make it private at least until Charbel and I get back safe from Ciudad Juarez. This way I can explain a little bit more about what we will be doing and where we will be staying while we are down there without having to worry about that information getting into the wrong hands.

Charbel will be having her interview on April 28th at 8:15 AM at the US Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Here are our plans so far:  I am going to drive to Denver on Saturday and then Sunday morning I will fly to Mexico City. Charbel will be flying into Mexico City as well from Minatitlan. Luckily we were able to get flights that arrive within 20 minutes of each other so that will be nice.

Next one of Charbel's uncles, who is a taxi driver, will pick us up and take us to Charbel's sister and brother in law's house and we will all visit and talk for a while. If her uncle can take us to the airport in the morning, then we will go back to their house Sunday night and sleep there. If not, then we will stay at her sister's house and call up a taxi driver that we met there the last couple times we were in Mexico City.

Monday morning our flight leaves at about 11 AM and we will arrive at Ciudad Juarez around 1PM. We made reservations at La Quinta Inn, which is right around the corner from the Consulate and all of the other places that we will need to go. They supposedly have a pretty good shuttle service that will pick us up from the airport and take us wherever we need to go for free :)

Tuesday morning we will get up early (around 5:30 or 6) and go to the medical clinic where Charbel will have to have her medical exam. Supposedly there are always a lot of people there so we have to get there early because it closes at 11.  After that we will probably just stay at the hotel most of the day, because we don't really want to be wondering around the most dangerous city in the world too much, haha.

Wednesday morning is Charbel's interview. So we will go about 15 or 20 minutes early. For some reason that I still can not understand, the American Spouse is not allowed inside the United States Consulate. So I will have to wait outside. Supposedly there is a place across the street where we can wait. Sometimes the whole interview/turning in documents process takes around 4 hours, but hopefully it will be shorter so that I won't be waiting outside for too long.

Assuming everything goes well with the interview (fingers crossed) We should be able to pick up Charbel's visa from the local DHL office that same afternoon or the next morning. As soon as we get it and if it is still day time, we will head for the border, cross into El Paso (second safest big city in the United States - ironic that the second safest in the United States is just a few hundred feet from the most dangerous in all of Mexico and the world.) Our current flight home is scheduled on Southwest for Friday afternoon, but we may be able to change it and get home by thursday :)

Anyway, those are our plans, and we are just hoping everything works out perfectly.

Charbel will have a baby shower/good bye party this Friday at her stake center, and here is the video that I put together from all of the videos that my family sent. Thanks!



I will let everyone know how everything goes when we get back!