Showing posts with label Visas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Visas. Show all posts

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Circumventing.



It turns out that getting a Visa ranks pretty low on the list of fun things to do in life. Not fun, not easy, and pretty much never straightforward. As such, we have been rerouted to Chicago for Dan's interview with the Korean Consulate and the Visa fetching. We'll still be flying from Florida on Tuesday (at 6 in the morning, thanks sleepy parents!). Chicago's consulate doesn't promise Visas until 2-3 days after the interview, so we're not sure yet when we'll fly out to Seoul. Did either of us mention that school starts March 2?

We're excited to get to spend time in Chicago. We spent our honeymoon and first anniversary there.

One last thing about Visas that I refuse to do is pay $14 to some random clerk at Walgreen's for Passport photos, so we took them ourselves and then had to trick the Kodak machine at Walmart in order to print them:


I think we had to choose "Greeting cards", then "Other Holidays", then "Basic Plaid", and I still had to trim off 1/4" from each side. Total cost in dollars was 1.21, total cost in frustration, though, was incalculable, which was unfortunate but not insurmountable.

-Serenity

Also, spending all this time with my family has made me realize that often, as a conversational construct, we all repeat phrases in unusual voices. And I am okay with that.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

The First Day of the Rest of Our Lives.



It starts today. Well, we found out today, at least. In truth it starts February 23. We received our Visa issuance confirmation numbers. Now we'll make an appointment for February 23 with the Korean Consulate in Atlanta (maybe we will go see the Coca-Cola Factory or Dan mentioned some rock thing?). They will make sure we are real humans and hopefully approve our Visas. When that happens, this will be the subsequent sequence of events:

2/24 - Pick up Visa from the Consulate
2/25 - Depart from Atlanta
2/26 - Arrive in Seoul (so we will effectively lose February 26, 2010 since we will arrive in
the future)
2/26-28 - Move in with host family
2/28 - Move into our rented apartment

It's going to be insane.

-Serenity