The Best Laid Plans

I love change, and all of the planning that goes into making changes in one's life.  Some will call it stress, but for the most part, it is exciting and a bit exhilarating to me.  Today my story is of "planning gone bad".

After getting all of the paperwork to Beijing to get our work permits, we finally received our documents needed to obtain our "Z" visa from the Chinese Consulate in Chicago.  These four pages came DSL to us in mid June.  Daniel, Anna and I planned our road trip to Chicago after learning that we must go in person, or send a trusted person on our behalf. We opted to do it ourselves.  Hours before we were leaving on Wednesday morning, I realized I had only one free page left in my passport.  This concerned me because I knew we would need another visa once we arrived, and there would be no room for it.  Being proactive, we traveled to the US Passport office in Minneapolis to discover that adding more pages could be done that day, but would cost $140.  Wow.  One of my former students was working and told me, "Mrs Krengel, if I was you I would just get a new passport for $170. Then it will last 10 years instead of the 2 years left on your passport. It can also be done today by 3:00."  Made sense.  I did it.

It is now 3:30 and we are just leaving for our drive to Chicago.  We made it to Elgin, Illinois by 10:30 pm.  However, all the way down I was silently processing an issue - I now had a new passport with a new number and new expiration.  All the paperwork from Beijing had my old passport.  WHAT HAD I DONE???

Morning arrives. It is now 10:30 am at the Chinese Consulate in downtown Chicago.  We enter the room to find a machine that gives us a number depending on the service we need.  We are number 256.  They are currently on number 240. I am pretty worried that I will not be getting my visa, and this trip will be repeated later in July.  I try to think ahead (you know, plan...).  I make a photocopy of my old passport; I make a photocopy of my new passport.  At 11:45 we are called to the window.  I explain to the Chinese woman about the visa.  She says No-- the documents must match the paperwork.  I say, I just made the change yesterday; you can see this. I have my old passport and new to show you. I tell her we are traveling in less than one month.  She says, "then you have time".  I say, I don't live in Chicago.   She says, No. Now, what do you want me to do?  I say, just process Dan and Anna's, and I will come back for mine.  I am a bit tearful; Anna rubs my back and shoulders.  She throws our work permit paperwork back to us through the window and says, "make copies of this - over there" (pointing to a copy machine) - "then come back".  We do this.  We come back.  She roughly tells me that I MUST have this paperwork fixed by the time I get to China or I will have big problems.  Then she hands me a slip of paper and says "Come back at 2:00".  I look at the paper.  It says 3 visas.

I walk away not really understanding what just happened.  But I feel like perhaps she is going to give me the visa after all.  Could it be?

2:00 arrives.  We queue up at the pick-up window.  Yes.  I have a visa. We all have visas!

Next step...transporting our belongings to China.