It turns out that when they say that the hours for applying for a passport is between 9 and 3:30, what they meant to say is that you can show up between 9 and 12, or 1 and 3.
When we showed up at the post office, we "took a number" (21, to be exact) and they were just calling number 8 to the counter.
"8... 21 - this shouldn't be too bad," I reassured Alex and Linda (and Nathan).
However, because the majority of the people who were in line in front of us had a very limited command of the English language, it was taking about 30 minutes per person to process.
Mamie Linda, used to dealing with des fonctionnaires in their native environment (France has excellent examples) was quick to find a way to accelerate our place in line.
"Number 9" shouted the single passport-processor at the counter.
So, Linda befriended a Spanish-speaking lady who happened to sneak into the passport aisle via the "normal post office line." This lady had been there for a while, and was holding a MUCH better number than ours (11). Linda asked her "if you are able to do what you need to do for your passport without requiring your ticket, can you give it to me so that we can use it?"
Sure enough we received the ticket and 1 hour later were standing in front of the processor getting Nathan's passport situation all worked out (photo, included).
As we were leaving, Linda ran into a middle aged man with his wife and two sub-5 year old sons who also showed up to get passports, but who were told that "no more numbers/tickets were being distributed today." He was despondent. His wife (with two screaming kids in tow) was a little manic.
Mamie Linda offered him our original ticket, #21 and made their day!
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