The Visa Dance
I just read Matt's post about our visa arriving and it seems so bland. But perhaps he was embarrassed to say that when the visa arrived on our doorstep we both did "the visa dance" around the house for about an hour?
The whole process of getting the visa has been full of suspense, so I shouldn't have been surprised when the end was also suspenseful. We arrived home yesterday after doing a ton of errands to find a small, letter-size Fed Ex envelope on our doorstep. Could it be our visas? We hoped it was but wouldn't say anything to the other in fear that our hopes were to be dashed. So we raced to the front door to see who could grab the envelope faster. Matt beat me. Immediately, we knew it was from the consulate.
Matt handed the envelope to me (what a nice husband!) and let me open it. There were only three things inside: a receipt for the cash we had given for the processing fee (the consulate only took cash or money orders) and both Matt and my passports. No sheet of paper saying "congratulations"; no sheet of paper saying "better luck next time".
So...we both grabbed our passports and fanned them as quickly as possible. And, as Matt said in the earlier post, on page 12 we found them. They look very similar to a photocopy of the first page of our passport, but they used the new photos we had given them, it's nearly all in Hebrew, and it says very distinctly, "State of Israel" on it. The visa is glued onto the passport, taking up just about the entire page.
We've been so stressed about not having a visa, that I don't think it's really hit us yet that we have it. I was so sure that we wouldn't know until late next week. However, this is the best news we could have been given. For now, we are officially going to Israel and we get to keep our London trip! Woot!
The whole process of getting the visa has been full of suspense, so I shouldn't have been surprised when the end was also suspenseful. We arrived home yesterday after doing a ton of errands to find a small, letter-size Fed Ex envelope on our doorstep. Could it be our visas? We hoped it was but wouldn't say anything to the other in fear that our hopes were to be dashed. So we raced to the front door to see who could grab the envelope faster. Matt beat me. Immediately, we knew it was from the consulate.
Matt handed the envelope to me (what a nice husband!) and let me open it. There were only three things inside: a receipt for the cash we had given for the processing fee (the consulate only took cash or money orders) and both Matt and my passports. No sheet of paper saying "congratulations"; no sheet of paper saying "better luck next time".
So...we both grabbed our passports and fanned them as quickly as possible. And, as Matt said in the earlier post, on page 12 we found them. They look very similar to a photocopy of the first page of our passport, but they used the new photos we had given them, it's nearly all in Hebrew, and it says very distinctly, "State of Israel" on it. The visa is glued onto the passport, taking up just about the entire page.
We've been so stressed about not having a visa, that I don't think it's really hit us yet that we have it. I was so sure that we wouldn't know until late next week. However, this is the best news we could have been given. For now, we are officially going to Israel and we get to keep our London trip! Woot!
posted by Jen | 3:07 PM
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