Přípravy

(English: Preparations)

Now that I am just about done working for the summer, it has finally hit me that I really am leaving soon. For almost a year "study abroad" was just a vague term for an event in the distant future. What was once the distant future is now the near future, and all of those little things that I had been putting off for "right before I leave" need to be done. I'll be spending the next week doing some last minute shopping, solving my visa problem, and fitting four months worth of clothes into two suitcases not to exceed 50lbs each. Seeing as how I have easily gone over the 50lb limit for a week's vacation, this is going to be quite the challenge.

In terms of my visa, I am in need of a lot of luck. A student visa to the Czech Republic takes 60-90 days to process, so at the end of May/early June, I followed the million steps and sent my paperwork to the consulate in New York. This paperwork included my passport. I am yet to receive my visa back, AND I NEED THAT PASSPORT TO TRAVEL! I have spent the last ten days dealing with the Kafkaesque bureaucracy that is the consulate of a former member of the Soviet Union. For a week and a half I called and left them a message EVERY DAY, and I never heard back from them. Today I finally decided to fax their office, and they called me back within an hour. THEY WON'T RETURN PHONE CALLS BUT THEY JUMP AT THE CHANCE TO ANSWER A FAX! SERIOUSLY? Anyway, my visa is not yet approved and if I don't get it by Wednesday I have to fax them again and request my passport sans visa and continue trying to get the visa while in Prague already. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it comes in before Wednesday.

If my experience with the consulate is any indication of what the Czech Republic itself is like, this will be quite the interesting semester!