Dinu - US citizen

The whole process is finally complete and he has reached his goal. Dinu is a US citizen.

The ceremony itself was only about 20 minutes, maybe 25 minutes. The wait was forever. His appointment was at 9am, and if he has learned nothing else from me, he has learned to be early for appointments of importance. Unfortunately, I was also there at 8:30am, because I thought he needed a copy of our marriage certificate and might have forgotten to take it with him. Turned out he didn't need it, so I didn't need to be there before about noon.

Anyway, having arrived at 8:30am, he got in the queue, turned in his green card and went into the Hynes auditorium to his seat. He was lucky to get an end seat in about the eighth row. I went upstairs to the visitors balcony and found a good seat. And then the wait began.

The appointment form tells you that the ceremony may take six hours. What it *should* tell you is, bring a book, or a magazine, or something to entertain yourself, because 5-1/2 of those 6 hours will be spent sitting in a rather uncomfortable chair, waiting. Those of us in the balcony had some small measure of padding on our seats. The wretched masses on the floor were sitting on metal folding chairs.

Dinu's 9am appointment was the earliest scheduled check-in, along with maybe 200 others. Altogether, 1804 people became citizens during this ceremony, and we were told that is a smaller than usual group. Average is closer to 3000. I sure hope they break that into a morning and afternoon session.

All that is left is getting a passport, and he's done. At last he is beholden to no one.