Visa @ MindSay

My passport had been at the visa office (to get my work visa valid until August 2008) since right before the National Day vacation and was supposed to be ready on the 9th-- but wasn't.  It wasn't ready yesterday, either, but i was promised it would definitely be ready/get picked up today and the foreign affairs lady told me she should be back by 16:00, at which time she would call me.  At the height of my frustration--of course i shouldn't have let myself get at all stressed since a part of me knew i would get it back in time since Nancy and i had said the Remover of Difficulties (and other) prayers for it-- and that prayer has always removed my difficulties!-- i finally did get my passport back!  At about 18:30... and i'd been waiting since 16:00, so i was beginning to wonder if i'd need to skip my morning classes to go there myself, and even sent an email to the foreign affairs officer to that effect.  As a last ditch effort i went to their office from where i was able to have someone there call her cell phone and only then found out that she had been able to pick it up and would be back soon!  So she gave me the passport and i gave her a postcard of Colorado i had written a thank you note on around noon in anticipation of getting it back today.  Andi (her English name) then offered to try to reserve one of the 2 school cars to take me to (and bring me back from--upon my return) the airport-- I gratefully accepted the offer. Then i had dinner with a student friend-- he doesn't have an English name yet-- can't remember if he wants one or not... He's very sad that i'll be gone for 3 weeks!  After dinner, I was going to help him find a good English book to help him improve his English at the Library but it was closed, we'll try again on Saturday at noon.  On getting home i sent an email to Andi thanking her some more and also giving her the exact time of my return with flight number.  After passing through the Foreigner Teacher's compound gate a gate guard hurried up with some mail :^)  One of them was a snail-mail from my mom, using the new address labels i sent out.  They work well and it doesn't seem like it was opened before it got to me.  It was a short letter and 2 photos of their 40th wedding anniversary :^)

I’ve decided to keep a blog documenting my experiences abroad for the 2007/2008 academic year.  Deb Holman asked if I would be interested, I thought about it, and it would please me to keep ya’ll updated on what’s going on.  I’ll update it periodically, I’m not going to say I’ll get to it once a week, or twice a week, or every other week, or daily, etc.  You can expect excerpts from my journal, but I think mostly I will be using my journal as an outline to summarize my stay.

 

For those of you who don’t know the story of my visa—here it is in a nutshell.  A student visa is required for studying abroad for an extended period of time.  In the case of Spain, I had to apply in person at the consulate whose jurisdiction includes the state of Colorado.  A trip to LA became the focal point of my summer plans.  I called ahead to try to set up an appointment and they said to just come in and they would accommodate me that day or the next.  Good enough.  Well, when I got to the consulate, I was informed that I would not be able to get an appointment until the next week, which would have been past the 45 day cut-off.  (One must apply for a student visa between 90 and 45 days before the program start date.)  But thankfully my mom worked some mom magic and I got in.  Time to leave the US, and my visa still had not arrived in the mail.  I cancelled my flights, made some reservations for the 30^th and really, really hoped it would be in my hands by then.  It arrived in the morning and I was in the air that afternoon.

 

Some lessons learned:

-Apply for your visa early

-Consider the cancellation policies of the agency you buy your tickets from

-Mileage plus miles are awesome

-Your mom always knows what to do

-It’ll all work out so long as you’re on your game

-Google STA travel, they’ll let you change flights at no charge—consider them when booking flights.

-To quote a friend, “There’s gonna be fun.”

 

I invite you to check back here every now and then—see what’s going on, see what I’m up to.  See you in Europe.

 

Charlie

I finally got my visa... and my final information concerning where I will be! First, the visa part.

 

I had a Certificate of Eligibility... basically a nice form that isn't really a visa, but sure as hell speeds up the process. I traveled to my local neighborhood Japanese embassy and turned in all my paperwork and pictures. I was then told that because everything was in order and I had a COE, my visa could be assigned immediately... which in bureaucratic government terms means I was able to pick it up the next day. Now, I don't know about you folks and your foreign consulates, but the one in Chicago is a royal pain in the ass to get to any time of the day... and it keeps weird hours. Regardless, I was able to drop off my passport on Thursday and pick it up on Friday. It is now in my grimy mitts and ready for it's ultimate purpose, that being to keep me from breaking international law.

 

Next, I received my assignment. Beautiful Nara Japan will be my home for the next year or so. Nara is a pretty cool place... it's got a lot of historical sites, the kickass deer park (which I will write more about later) and is very close to both Kobe and Osaka. Nara is in the Kansai region so it's denizens speak with the awesome Kansai accent, which is roughly equivalent to a southern American accent or a... I dunnow... Manchester accent in the UK? Maybe? Whatever the case, I love the idea of studying in a place with a more localized and non-traditional dialect. Hopefully I'll pick up on it and start sounding like a native Japanese speaker in no time! Well, you know... until they actually look at me and see I'm not Asian.

 

I will specifically be teaching in a small ward of Nara called Kashihara. It's a nice looking place with a smaller population and lots of stuff around it. I'm hoping that after I arrive I will be able to get a bike or scooter... preferably a scooter. I would love to tell my kids one day that their dad scooted around Japan for a few years when he was young... -er. Even if a scooter is out of my reach most stuff in Japan is walkable, bikable or train-able anyways, so I'm sure I'll be fine.

 

I have made an effort to find out more about what it's like to actually live in Kashihara, but the main page for the ward is in Japanese (of course) and although I could probably read it with minimal help from a dictionary (well, marginal help), I'm still intimidated by that much Japanese writing even after all these years... No, wait, intimidated is the wrong word. I'm simply too lazy. But I suppose I will get around to it before I go, despite my laziness whenever I have a date that something needs to be done by I tend to get it done... albeit at the last possible minute.

 

I will have two flat-mates... one from Canada and the other America. I was honestly hoping to live with people not from my continent, but you have to take what life gives you. Besides, I'll probably have to move out when my fiancé arrives so we can live together, so again, not as bad as I thought. Anyways they might be really cool guys so I'm not going to be negative. Well, not more negative than usual.

 

Another cool thing is that I'll be arriving at Kansai International Airport (KIX). The airport itself is built in the middle (roughly) of the bay just adjacent to Osaka. It just sorta floats there... and sinks there a bit as well. I doubt I'm unlucky enough to be on the flight that actually puts the whole thing underwater, but it is a bit unnerving.

 

I’ll update again with more on Nara and those guides I was talking about before.  This is my last full week in America and I have to get all my stuff together, do shopping, exchange some monies… I had all this time on my hands and it STILL gets hectic in the home stretch. I guess that’s the way it has to be. C’est la vie.

 

-Maru!

 

I would also like to add that Mindsay suggested the tag "basically useless information" for me when I was on about the second paragraph of this update. Thanks for the bode of confidence guys!

Ok, so my mom woke me up at 5:30 this morning so we could haul ass to NY and get my visa. We got up there as soon as the consulate opened, but they said we wouldn't be able to pick up the visa until Friday. Cool. We drove three hours to spend ten minutes being told that we get to do the exact same thing again in four days. The best part is that we got charged $22 by the garage where we were parked for freaking 17 minutes.

But that doesn't even matter, ok? Right now my homegirl Jess is on her way to the UK. Godspeed, lady. I wish you were going to Japan

Man, those smiley jons are great.