Big Day: New Visa and New Apartment

It is no exaggeration to say that I signed my name twenty times today. First, I took a trip to immigration to get my Visa. Then I signed a lease on my new apartment.

The trip to immigration went very smoothly -- not due to the simple process, but instead due to the huge amount of help given to me by the University. The process was unbelievaby bureaucratic. I turned in a 15 page stack of papers (prepared by the school with most pages signed by me) and my passport to one person who did the following: read, stamp, add page, stamp, stamp, sign. Then I went upstairs and handed the stack to another person: stamp, sign, stamp, stamp, scribble. Moved to the next person: staple, stamp, sign, stamp, stamp, staple.

The signing of the apartment went a little smoother. Luckily my Thai friend Hoon was there to help, as the contract was completely in Thai. It makes me very uneasy to sign something I can not read, but I trust that Hoon did a good job of reading the basic contract (he actually caught a couple of mistakes). In any case, I had to sign every one of the 3 pages plus the two copies of my passport.

So after all of that, I now have a Visa and an apartment -- both for one year. Whew!

Add all of that to the new war in Iraq and it was a big day. I detest war and I think it is horrible that my country will be responsible for the deaths of thousands of people, but now that it has started, I hope it can be finished as quickly and as cleanly as possible. To show my support for America, though, I had a coffee at Starbucks and a pretzel at Autie Anne's. :)