This morning at 9am I arrived at the Chinese Embassy. Visa documents in hand (after being lost by the UPS for 3 days) I strolled up to the medieval church that is the Embassy, excited to finally get my working Visa. Little did i know the physical I got last week was done with the wrong type of document. I waited in line for an hour only to have a rather irritated chinese woman bark at me "you need to go to hospital." My flight is booked for 7am tomorrow and my visa must be processed before 11am in order for me to get it in time to leave. I have an hour. I cannot just "go to hospital"
Or could i? Luckily my mother works at the hospital so I drove their wildly, almost crashing numerous times and screaming at construction workers. Of course their was no parking so I had to park on the roof of the parking garage and ran down the stairs to the hospital. My mom hunted down a doctor who she knew and got him to fill out all the papers (thank you doctor whoever for saving my trip) I then began a manly dash back through the hospital, narrowly dodging expectant mothers and cancer patients. I had to get to the embassy before 11am and it was 10:45.
After a few more construction workers ruined my life I finally arrived back at the Chinese Embassy at 11:05 only to find another huge line. I have a feeling i ought to get used to long lines of asian people. Using the little mandarin I know I begged the people in the front of the line to let me cut in. I'm pretty sure I heard some people in line laugh as I tried the very few words I knew. "Qing bang wo! xie xie! Flight! Ba dian!" I think they eventually felt sorry for me and let me go first.
After breathing a huge sigh of relief I finally got my working Visa and have everything ready to go for the move. I also had to buy a digital camera, get chinese money and immunization records today. All good fun!
My flight leaves at 7am to Vancouver then a 13 hour flight to Shanghai and finally to Wuhan. In total it will be about 23 hours. I'm going to miss this place and all my family and friends. You have all been a great help getting me prepared (and drunk last saturday) for going overseas. I'm sorry If i didn't get to say goodbye to everyone! To keep in touch with me either add me to skype: corey.j.taylor or comment on here.
My next post will be from China so if my plane doesn't explode, get highjacked, or morph into a robot like Starscream, I will update everyone once i've landed.
Goodbye Canada! Have a good year everyone
Corey
Congrats on landing such a wicked opportunity! I hope it proves to be everything you hoped for and more! Have fun, and good luck with everything!
ReplyDeleteBrea
So lucky that your Mom saved your sweet @ss!!
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