Fun with immigration!

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There are so many things to tell and so little time! Last night I was too tired to do much of anything. Tonight I have more time and am feeling better, and I have a bad computer. Isn't that just life!

This was a busy day, and it has been a bit stressful the past few days. Megan and I came to China with a 30 day visa, but are staying 31 days (at least by our count). The other day (Monday I think, but I can't keep track any more, already feels like I have been here months!) our fearless leaders, Steve Ray and David Du, collected our passports so they could go to immigration and extend our visas. However they denied it. I tried to call Asiana to change our plane tickets. BOY THAT WAS A CHORE! After many attempts, I made it thru to Asiana's office in America, but their office there was closed and they forwarded the call to Korea. After what seemed like hours on the phone (when it is the heat of the day in Xinyang, China and you are standing in a make shift phone booth in the back corner of a bra and hair-doodad shop five minutes seems like an eternity!) I gave up and walked back "home." I was able to get thru to Asiana's Beijing office on the CSV (China Service Ventures) cellphone and connected with someone who spoke English, however I questioned how well. After going around and around with her I finally was told that even if I cancelled the first half of my trip from Beijing to Seoul and took a plane to Seoul leaving on August 6th, rather than 7th, I could not do it. She told me I could not stay in Seoul over 24 hours. I don't know if this information is correct or not, but that is what she told me. This was after about 15 or 20 minutes of going around and round with her that I had seats booked from Seoul to Seattle. She kept insisting I couldn't do it because all their flights from Seoul were booked full until August 28th. UGH

So we went to plan B - Tuesday one of our students, Amy, took us to get our pictures taken for new visa applications. More fun after work and we were late for supper then! Today, another student, Leo, had to take us by cab to immigration to meet Mr. Yang (he works for CSV) and finish our visa applications. We also had to have new pictures done, seems the ones done Tuesday were NOT okay. I have to take off my earrings and button up my shirt so my necklace didn't show. They made Megan put on a shirt they happened to have handy. I guess she was showing too much skin! That cost us 40 RMB each (about $5-6 each), after we paid 40 RMB for both of us the day before! After all was said and done the immigration officer said our visa was fine, and we didn't need an extension. By our count we will be in China 31 days, but he insisted in very good English that we would be here 1 month and we were fine. We asked him several times and our helper, Mr. Yang, also questioned him in Chinese. I finally didn't want to ask anymore for fear of pissing him off. Ken, one of our fellow teachers teaching in another city, met us there after a 2 hour bus ride in the heat of the day, because he also needed an extension - he REALLY did. It cost him the 40 RMB for the picture too and another $150 US for the new visa. Glad that wasn't us!

So Leo took us back to work after missing 2 hours of class! So that was ONE of our adventures for today. More to come!

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