...or maybe not?

It seems a bit odd to be posting to a travel blog without actually having left the country.  Oh well, the drama that encompassed the last few days is entirely blog-worthy.

Our scheduled date for arrival in Caracas was Sunday, September 12.  My seven fellow ETAs (that's English Teaching Assistant, to you) and I, though we'll be scattered around the country for the next ten months, were to start our tenure in fair VZ with a two-day orientation put on by the US Embassy in Caracas.  Orientation Monday and Tuesday, with everyone heading to their respective cities and institutions by Wednesday.

Now approximately five weeks ago, we'd all dutifully sent off our passports and visa applications to the Venezuelan Consulate in Washington DC.  Liaising with the Fulbright folks in New York and Washington DC, they were going to handle the paper pushing behind getting we eight our visas in time for our September 12th departure.  Meanwhile the eight of us bustled around our respective cities getting vaccinations, packing our bags, doing about ten last-minute trips to Walmart (or maybe that was just me), and sharing goodbye lunches/dinners/drinks/parties/coffees/nights-on-the town.

We'd been warned, of course, that these passports might come back to us very eleventh-hourish.  Last year's ETAs, we heard, got theirs the NIGHT BEFORE they left.  Anything to keep the blood pumping!  Needless to say, I was on vigilant 'visa watch' last week, which consisted of dashes to the mailbox interspersed with frantic e-mail threads with the other ETAs.  The Fulbright office was wonderful in handling all of us, bundles-of-nerves as we were.  Finally on Thursday - check that, FOUR days before our scheduled departure - the contingency plan came in: should the visas not be into the Fulbright offices by late-morning Friday, departure plans were on hold.

Enter a one-night limbo.  I decompressed by attending a crew dinner and another party that were good-bye events.  For me.  Ah well.  Friday morning, a bleary-eyed e-mail check confirmed the worst: deadline passed, there was still no sign of our visas/passports.  We were literally stuck in the United States until our passports made it back to us.  Instructions were to cancel our tickets and rebook for approximately 2.5 weeks later, arriving in Caracas on September 28th.  A lesson in learning to be "flexible", as we were told in the e-mails that followed.

So I start this blog sitting in my parents' house in Cary, still seeing the people I'd said dramatic goodbyes to (Goodbye Bash 2.0, anyone?), taking the yippy Chihuahuas for walks, being howled at to improve the status of my room, watching an ABSURD amount of television, and despairing at the amount of assorted goodies I need to cram into my backpack and another suitcase.

Still, in the spirit of being flexible, here's to one more round of Bojangles fries, one more trip to Atlanta, one more NCSU football game, a few more rowing practices, another evening at The Flying Saucer, another night on Glenwood, another couple weeks with a US phone number, and more time with friends.  Caracas can wait, for now. :-)