The Journey of 6,000 Miles

...begins with a whole lotta paperwork!

After much schedule-rearranging and such, The Lovely Wife(tm) and I finally made it down to The Jewish Agency Aliyah Center last week to get started on our plans to move to you-know-where. A few hours and a lovely chat with our Shaliach later, we are now the proud owners of a blue folder containing approximately 4,324 different forms to be filled out (some in duplicate, naturally), and instructions to obtain an equal number of sundry documents from external sources (marriage certificates, documented stays in this country, NASA space camp graduation, etc). We don't even have identical papers, since I'm technically already an Israeli citizen (my mother's being born in Israel makes me a citizen automatically). You'd think that would simplify things, but ohhh no... I gotta get me a passport from the consulate (open during the oh-so-convenient hours of 9am-noon... I gotta get me one of those jobs), demonstrate that I haven't been in Israel for over a certain length of time in the past x years, and all kinds of other fun narishkeit (that would be yiddish for "nonsense," for the non-members of the tribe). Ah, well, one page at a time, eh?