Arriving in Hong Kong was exciting. The train stopped, we grabbed our bags and followed the crowd of people to customs. Customs went smoothly apart from me having to explain why my name isn't 'Added. '
In my passport the name at the front is Kari Asselstine, since I had my passport before I got married, but there is this stamp on one of the pages that reads, "Bearer's married surname is Jones. Added at Ottawa." I never have a problem with this. Not to say that this was really a problem, but rather an annoying misunderstanding on the customs officer's part.
On the custom forms I filled out I, of course, wrote that my name was Kari Jones. Well, the customs officer pointed out that my name on the forms didn't line up with my name in the passport. He was, at this time, looking at the stamped page of my name change, so I was confused to why he would say that. I assured him that my name did line up with on the forms and passport. He told me again that they didn't. He took his pen and wrote something beside my name on the forms. "What are you doing?" I asked. In his broken English told me that my passport says that my surname is Jones Added, therefore I need to have the name Added next to Jones on all my forms. I immediately protested and went on to explain that Added isn't a name but a word meaning that the name Jones was legally joined to my name in Ottawa, the capital of Canada. He looked confused as I re-worded myself trying to dumb it down for him to understand. Fortunately, he soon did understand and crossed out his added 'Added' to my name on the forms. A passing stamp went in my passport and I was now officially in Hong Kong.
Fortunately the visa office was within walking distance of the train station. As soon as we got our directions figured out, and exchanged some RMB to HK dollars, we were headed out the door for the visa office.
The visa office visit was a learning experience for us. We had to fill out applications forms for the visa, the lady at the front desk handed us the forms informing us that these forms were for Me and my son and the other was for Patrick. How special, Patrick gets his own form. I went to work filling our Amariah and I's form, which didn't take long. There were just the standard questions, name, and birthday, how long do you plan to be in China and that was basically it. After I filled out both Amariah's and mine I noticed Patrick was still filling out his form. "What could he possibly be writing that is taking so long," I thought to myself. I glanced over at his application form and he had so many more questions that I had, questions that were far more detailed than mine were. I was surprised and asked him, "Why do you have so many more questions than I had?" He responded, "This is the application for Americans, yours was the general application." "Oh." I didn't know Americans had their own form.
When we went to front desk to hand in our application, she told Patrick that he would have to leave the country once a month, but Amariah and I could stay for 3 months. When I asked why, she answered, "He's American." I just accepted that. I was thankful that I didn't have to leave every month, especially with the new baby coming. We then said that we would like the same day service so that we could pick up our visas later that day and head back to China. She said, "For Kari and Amariah, no problem, but for Patrick the soonest I can have yours done is by noon tomorrow." That was more than 24 hours away. "Why can't we all be processed at the same time?" Again, her response was, "He's American." Apparently there is no same day service for Americans. "Great, now we are going to have to call work and say that we aren't coming in, we are going to have to find a place to spend the night…" I was thinking to myself.
The answer to our next question was the topper for me. "How much will our visas be?" "For Kari and Amariah, HK$450, for Patrick HK$ 1400" "What!?!?! Why is his more than 3 times the cost of ours?" She looked at me and answered, "He's American." At this point my mind was racing, "You have got to be kidding me. This is unreal. This is ridiculous" and so on. The good news was that when they charged us for the pictures for the visas, the price was the same.
Gathering our stuff, we headed out with the idea of finding a place to eat. It was almost lunchtime and we were hungry. Even though we were frustrated the next 24 hours ended up being a blessing.
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