Well, this is a frustrating few days. Still no news.
On Tuesday morning I wrote the Czech Consulate in Los Angeles to say that, now that the 90-day waiting period is over, I was eager to hear. On Tuesday night I received a two-sentence reply.
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| Very helpful |
Also, my friend Jiri here chastised me for not involving him earlier, as he has contacts who could help. On Tuesday morning I contacted him to ask what kind of help he was imagining — if he's thinking of having me make a new application for an Employee Visa (with me pretending to work for his company), I'm not interested, but if he has contacts at the Ministry who could help, I'm all ears. He replied that he had a high school friend working at the Foreign Ministry he could call to put in the good word for me. I said by all means, so he called ... and his friend picked up the phone in Korea.
They've agreed to speak again when his friend returns on Friday. I don't much know how much good that will do, but it can't hurt — I asked Jiri not to suggest that we're pulling strings in any way, but only to emphasize that he knows me, can vouch for me, and would like to recommend that my application me granted. Maybe it'll help?
In any event, my 90-day Schengen visa (a basic tourist visa) expires on February 22, so I'll have to leave before then anyway, as, even if I receive word that the visa has been granted, I'll have to leave the country to pick it up and return. So I bought a ticket to the US for next Friday. It's not ideal — especially now that all my stuff is here, I'm sort of enjoying the prospect of settling in and relaxing. But it's ok. I'll fly to the US on Friday, see some friends, and then — I hope, assuming I've gotten good news from the consulate — fly to LA, pick up the visa, and fly back home, maybe even within a week.
Of course, that assumes I actually receive the visa. If they don't give it to me — or if they continue to stay silent — I'll have to stay overseas, potentially until the end of MAY. Aside from everything else, this makes packing for that trip difficult. Should I take two giant suitcases, packing everything I might need for three months abroad? Or should I pack lightly, for a quick trip?
Similarly, I think I've found someone to take care of Catalina for the duration of a shorter trip to the US, but it's almost impossible to make plans for a cat-sitter "in case I'm gone for three months." They need to plan as well, after all. And i'd really rather not put her in a kennel for three months, nor force her to travel again.
Once again, this would all be much much easier if I didn't have a cat right now, but ... you know, she's a part of my family. I'm sure things would be much easier if people didn't have infants or toddlers they needed to make arrangements for ... but that doesn't mean you'd ask them to abandon their children. You just have to deal. (Still, though, in this case, they would just be taking their child with them, which isn't so much an option here).
Ah well. This is the last hurdle there is for me in this process. So far I have:
- Gotten a new passport
- Arranged for movers and overseen the packing/moving process
- Flown to Los Angeles to complete the lengthy visa application process (which itself involved a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy)
- Hired lawyers to help me set up two new companies in the Czech Republic
- Sold my car
- Gone to the vet and gotten all pet-travel documentation and certification
- Bought airline tickets for me and Catalina, and flown to Europe
- Negotiated that crazy apartment-search process, moving Catalina on the train and then from temporary to temporary, before finding a permanent home
- Overseen the arrival of my things from the US, and started the unpacking process
In the meantime, while I wait, I'm opening up my email frequently. Which is pointless, most of the time, as the time difference means there's no chance of me getting a message from the Consulate before 5 pm here. It being 8:30 am on Thursday as I write this, that means there won't be any news for at least another 8 hours today. And so I wait, and wait, and wait.
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