Do you know what an Apostille is?

Someone could write a pretty funny sitcom about my daily roadblocks of obtaining the proper papers for Greece. All the papers needed to be translated into Greek and notarized by the Greek Embassy. (Translation - $25 for each sheet and $10 per copies (I need 3 copies of each document) Notarization from embassy $32.10 for each packet - I had 3)) Most of us wouldn't think this was too awful but it gets worse. If I had to work and get this completed I might have chosen death!

I needed two letters from my doctor (stating I had no contagious diseases and was HIV-negative), my teacher's certificate, my college diploma, my birth certificate and my FBI clearance all translated. I found a wonderful translator (Maria and her helpful husband Nikos) and scanned and sent most of my papers to her. Once she got going she indicated that I needed my legal documents to have an apostille. What is an apostille? Good question!

Some countries in 1961 signed a contract at The Hague Convention stating if people had their papers with an Apostille it was a true legalization - it kind of trumps a notary. For more information http://www.greekembassy.org/embassy/content/en/Article.aspx?office=11&folder=917&article=20641 Greece and the US signed this contract! But ACS never said we needed anything with an apostille so it was really confusing to know whether we needed one or not. They are not so easy to obtain either.

I do have to laugh (although I am completely frustrated) because there isn't anything more I can do to expedite this process. My ooh so positive response to all these people I am chatting with on the phone is "Of course it takes 3-4 weeks or 12-14 weeks....) Let me just say that my renewed teacher's certificate wasn't available until July 1, so then I had to drive to Annapolis to get the apostille ($5). My college diploma is from the state of NH (I live in MD) - which I needed the college to notarize my diploma then send it back to me so I can send it to the Secretary of State of NH to get the apostille ($10). Then my birth certificate is from Ontario, Canada and I have the short-form version of the birth certificate. The Canadian Embassy could give me the apostille IF it was the long form. So I had to apply for the long version - $30 CDN + $35 CDN to expedite it but they couldn't send it to me in the US - so they sent it to my friend's house in Toronto and she FEDEX it to me ($40). Then I took it to the Canadian Embassy in Washington and obtained the $50 apostille - later to find out that Canada didn't even sign The Hague Contract! And no one told me this because???????

I sure hope I have all the appropriate papers since I had to sacrifice my original documents to get the apostille, to complain a little more it cost me $99 to courier the papers to Greece!

One last thing - I am hoping that this experience is like child-birth (note - never have experienced it just using it as an analogy) It was painful at the time, but what it produces is so great that I forget about the pain.