15 September 2009

one lonely sticker

I sent my passport off to the Embassy of Vietnam with some trepidation, mostly because I wasn't sure I had left enough time for the visa to come through before I leave for Colombia. I was cutting it close, I thought. There were 18 days, including seven days of weekend/holiday, and I just could not bear to pay four times as much to send it overnight mail.

I got it back in 9, with its first full page (poor little new passport, so empty). That means that I will make it on my flight to Colombia, a week from today.

I kept flipping my passport open all weekend to gaze fondly on the sole yellow visa sticker it now contains. Today, in my extreme over-excitement, I showed it to a friend, who looked at it and said, "Now, what is a visa, exactly?"

I was flabbergasted. What...? How...? HOW? Visas are so familiar to me that I can't even explain them. They have been a part of my life since before I can remember, as have entry permits and exit permits and boarding passes. They just are. A visa is... a visa. What else could it be?

(Bonus additional story about boarding passes: the first time I flew alone, when I was 20, I utterly panicked in the Pittsburgh airport because I did not have a boarding pass. Former childhood traveler: welcome to the world of electronic tickets.)

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