Papers and Plane Tickets

The doorbell rang. I was still asleep, but the high pitched chime roused me from my revelry. I looked at my watch. The date in corner of the watch face was Thu-Jan 10. The time was 8:59am. Part of me felt bad for sleeping in, but it was my day off and I had a busy weekend coming up.

I heard my Dad shuffle to the door. Through the muffled quiet of my bedroom, I listened deliberately. The door opened, but then, silence. There was no conversation. There was no discussion. The door opened, the door closed.

My curiosity made it difficult to drift back to sleep. It was probably just a package for Mom from home office, I thought. It could have been something my brother bought online. I wanted to sleep a little bit longer, but in the end, I gave in. I got up and, throwing my pajama pants on, I stammered downstairs.

"A package came for you," my Dad said as I wandered into the kitchen.

For me! The giddy four-year-old excitement of receiving a package never really does fade. I walked to the table and saw a priority mail envelope. Sure enough, it was addressed to me. In the upper left corner the return address read:

Consulate General of the Czech Republic

10990 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1100
Los Angeles, CA 90024

"Oh cool!" I said and tore into the envelope. I knew exactly what would fall out when I removed the seal. Sure enough, wrapped beneath layers of bubble wrap and packing tape was my passport. I turned it to the first blank page and saw in bright vibrant color...my visa!

I have officially been approved to live in the Czech Republic!

There was only one problem. I had planned to leave for Prague on February 5th. My Visa wasn't good until the 11^th.

I decided to call Lauren. Lauren is the Study Abroad coordinator at my university. Right off the bat she was shocked I had received my Visa. The Czech embassy is notorious for lengthy delays in the Visa approval process. When I told her about the mix up in dates she suggested that I could probably still go on February 5th, as long as I was out of the country by the latest date on my Visa.

"I would still call the Czech consulate to confirm that," she said. "I'd hate to give you bad information and have you get detained in customs for some reason."

I hung up with Lauren and called my Mom. She was making calls for work but I knew she had the number for the Czech consulate on her phone. I told her my visa had come and she was just as excited as my Dad and I had been. After four months of gloom-and-doom stories about lost passports, late visas, and being stuck in the Czech Republic, having that sticker in my passport was a huge hurtle we'd passed.

My Mom said she was going to call the consulate on her drive home. When she got to the house that night, she said the consulate had confirmed that I could go to Prague any time before my Visa was good, but I couldn't stay after it expired.

Now we were ready to book airfare.

We’d been monitoring airfare for over a month now. Every day that ticked by, the airlines jacked up prices. As my favorite satirist Dave Barry explains, "[Airfare] is determined by Rudy the Fare Chicken, who decides the price of each ticket individually by pecking on a computer keyboard sprinkled with corn. If an airline agent tells you that they're having ‘computer problems,’ this means that Rudy is sick, and technicians are trying to activate the backup system, Conrad the Fare Hamster.” (Full article available here).

The hang up in booking my ticket was we still didn't know when I was coming back. Classes started the 18th of February and ended the 17th of May. My family is planning to come over for 10-14 days after I get out of class but my brother doesn't finish school until the 21st of May. With weekend airfare, Memorial Day airfare, etc. we weren't sure the best time to book their tickets, which meant we didn’t know when I would be coming home.

A travel agent I work with had suggested that a one-way ticket would be the cheapest way to go. Not only would it work with my open ended schedule, but the price would be a little cheaper. While, a few family friends had told us the same thing, the math didn't quite add up. For example, a round-trip ticket to Prague with a layover in London ran roughly $975. A one-way ticket to Prague with the same layover was $725. While that was cheaper, it meant that I would spend another $725 to return to the states for a roundtrip total of $1,450.

Friday Jan 11th

I was on the train into downtown with my friend Bryan. I'd been so excited about getting my Visa I was tempted to carry it around and show it off to everyone...but then I realized that would not only be annoying to everyone, but not the safest idea in the world. I'd dodged a bullet by getting my passport back and on time, I didn't want to lose it by carrying it around my own home city.

But Bryan was excited for me. I told him I wanted to show it to him at some point as it was fun reading the words on it in Czech and trying to figure out what they meant. "Vizum" for example was Czech for "Visa."

I got a text as the train came to a station. It was from Mom so I called her back.

"Hey," she said. "I’m going to buy your ticket."

“Now?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m going to get you a one-way ticket, but the prices for February 5th have climbed out of our price range and I don’t want to wait any later. You don’t start class till the 18^th right?”

"Right, but I need to be in Prague no later than February 11th," I said. "Orientation starts on the 11th so I'd like to be there a day or two before that."

"Ok," my Mom said. She scrolled through and looked at a few flights. "Tell Bryan there's a flight on Iberia out of O'Hare on the 787." Bryan is working on his private pilot’s license and loves planes...the bigger the better.

About an hour later I got an email on my phone. It was confirming my flight from Denver to London and London to Prague on February 8th.

So after a busy and somewhat hectic week: I’m in! I’ve been approved for my Visa and my flight is booked. Now the trip is just 21 days away!