Maybe things like this just happen to me. Sometimes I wonder.
We are heading for Russia in a couple of days. This will be the third trip for Cindy. She has worked with teachers in Russia before, but there was not an opportunity for me to go along. Cindy is far more of an adventurer than I and more social, but you do not have these opportunities often and pushing yourself a little is important. I am going this time.
Some travel requires a visa – your passport is not enough. As much as Cindy has travelled you might think we would know what we are doing. However, the details were often handled by someone else and the process is a little more complicated than you might think.
First, it turns out there are several kinds of visas – business, humanitarian, tourist (my terms). We thought our trip might be a business trip. The application then requires that you identify your company and have a way to guarantee that your company will cover costs should you not have sufficient funds to get home. Our employer, the university, is not responsible for this trip. We have never bothered to incorporate as a business and representing ourselves as a company and then claiming we would cover our expenses should we not be able to cover our expenses seemed unlikely to be approved.
It turned out the type of work we do is considered humanitarian/cultural. This means something a little different to me, but I guess it implies that we are sharing ideas about educational practice with each other. To apply we had to identify the organization offering us an invitation. We had the invitation, but it was written in Russian. We assumed we were invited by the school district (or whatever the equivalent designation might be). I have a colleague in my department who is Russian and I asked him to translate. Dmitri determined that the invitation came from the city of Volgograd. I guess this makes sense if you understand this as a public school.
The problem with our uncertainty is that time passes. The less time available, the higher the cost of expedited services. We kept making mistakes resulting in the need to submit this or that by FedEx. Finally, we had all the forms filled out and all of the documents were submitted.
We were to receive our documents on Tuesday, but we received a message instead. It turns out my passport was never signed. I had to secure a new passport this year and I had my new passport in hand. I had even used it to cross the border into Canada. However, while I signed forms in multiple places and had my identify checked, I had not signed the passport when it was sent to me. No one had noticed. Despite appeals from multiple parties no approval was given and I would have to sign and resubmit my passport before rather than after.
If things work out perfectly, the visa should arrive on the morning of our projected departure. If FedEx cannot find me in the woods of Wisconsin, we will have to attempt to change our plane tickets, our one night hotel reservation in St. Petersburg, and our connecting flight to Volgograd. Far more excitement than I need.
More later.