Our wonderful friend Matt was finally able to pick up the Mister's visa after 3 attempts. The Mister now has 90 days to enter the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And get ready for a big shocker: I still don't have my sponsor letters from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Those letters are the last piece I need to send everything to the embassy. I got word from someone at the school that he is working on the letters, and they'll be ready on-wait for it- WEDNESDAY.
The day after we leave Washington D.C. to return home to Nashville.
God's testing me. I can just feel it.
We haven't even started our contract yet and already I'm getting major tests of my patience. If I thought working for the US government was annoyingly bureaucratic, I apparently ain't seen nothin' yet! The message that I keep getting is very clearly, "Calm down, little girl. We'll get to it when we get to it."
What's so frustrating about this whole process is that it's like they've set it up on purpose to that we have to jump through their hoops. Anyone who's ever worked with me knows how much of LOOVE to jump through irrational hoops.
There's the online visa application that we have to submit before the embassy will even look at our paperwork. It seemed simple enough, but we couldn't get our picture down to FOUR KILOBYTES in order to successfully submit the darn thing. I found a forum that said other people having the same problem just had to bite the bullet and pay a visa courier. I called one company to see how much that would cost us: $175 per person!! FOR ONE STEP! Almost $400 for a company to press submit.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is one hoop this show dog would NOT jump through.
Thankfully, I don't have to because we have a wonderful friend with an undergraduate degree in computer programming. And even Matt was stumped at first, but he was able to get the picture to the right size and we could proceed.
We came to DC for the sole purpose of submitting our paperwork in person. Mailing my passport and many other important documents makes me very nervous and I would really prefer to do this transaction face-to-face. We even scheduled this little foray up and down the East coast later in the summer because surely everything would be worked out over there by now!
Once again, "Calm down, little girl. We'll get to it when we get to it."
In happier, less frustrating news, we have a lot of photos from our trip to share with you! I can't wait to get home so we can load them all up!
We spent a few great days in Boston with my sister and brother-in-law. It was so nice to see them, and saying goodbye was very hard. When we arrived in DC, I was hungry and tired, and the Mister asked if I was a little frowny because I was sad to have not had more time with my sis.
"I am sad, but there's never enough time, you know?" I answered. "Even if we'd spent 2 weeks with them, I would be just as sad to say goodbye."
Anyway, we're in DC...pretty much killing time while our friends are working. We leave tomorrow night to go home.
meh, maybe we'll go see a monument or something. You know.
Vicariously yours,
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