Then….May 11, 2018, at 10.24pm (Yes, at night!), the embassy – visa department – finally responded to my email, explaining about how to make the appointment, etc. along with the links. They apologized that they didn’t immediately reply. Well, they were busy. I understand. But I really wished that they had had replied much earlier BECAUSE, apparently, when I clicked the appointment link again, there were some more slots available in May! Yes, in May! So, well, I checked my Greyhound tickets to Los Angeles, and (of course) they were non-refundable. But I thought I wanted to be done with this soon, so I risked it, I decided to have the appointment on May 16, 2018. Well, they said the processing time was usually a week to 10 days. I also read the reviews in Yelp, many said it could be less than that. So, well, my Greyhound tickets to Los Angeles charged $20 for a ticket change, i.e. I thought spending $40 for a change for the roundtrip tickets would be okay. *Sigh Plus, now I would need an overnight shipping return envelope (it’s $24ish. Hikz), just to make it safe, just so I could have my passport back by the time I have to fly to Philippines. Well, I guess that’s alright. I’d prefer to have the appointment in May rather than in June for another reason too. That way I don’t have to use my May’s bank statement. The problem was I spent quite a lot this May, for tickets and for eating out during the crazy final days of my semester, etc. If I were to have the interview in June, I would have to include my bank statement for May and that might be not good to prove my fanicancial stability 😀 Well, I guess it’s okay to spend more money on this since I really want to travel there. I live in Tucson, Arizona. I am an Indonesian passport holder. What do you expect? Though, honestly, sometimes I find it upsetting when people who do not need Schengen or UK visa comment on these whole processes of obtaining a visa. Like, they have no idea how hard it is for us to finally get a visa. But I guess it’s “understandable”, albeit unpleasant, that someone with such a privilege has such an attitude. If only they knew…
So, I called Greyhound. Apparently, I was to lazy to go to the station just to change the ticket. Fortunately, almost everything could be done by phone here. And that was it. I changed my Greyhound tickets to May 15 and 16. Well, I felt dilemmatic about this actually. It’s because May 16 was the first day of Ramadhan. You know I don’t really like traveling while fasting, right? But, well, I had to go. Otherwise, my mind wouldn’t rest in peace. And, by the way, guess what? They only charged me $20 for the change for both tickets. I guess I was lucky. I wonder when I’d run out of luck. It’s creepy…
On Monday, May 14, I got a reminder from the embassy about the appointment the next Wednesday. Well, I had prepared everything. The documents. My Greyhound tickets. The Return Envelope. Including my meals/lunchbox for the trip. It was the first two days of Ramadan, so I didn’t want to miss Sahur and Iftar on the road. I also browsed about the trips in Los Angeles. My Greyhound was scheduled to arrived in Los Angeles at 9.25am, while my appointment at the French embassy was at 2pm, so I thought maybe I could go to Hollywood Walk of Fame first. NSync just got their star recently. And I know this might sound childish, but a friend of mine is a die hard NSync fan, so I thought I could just go there to take a picture with a note “You will be here someday”. I thought she would be very happy. And since Backstreet Boys’ star was also in the same area, I thought I could take a picture there too for me and for friends who loved BSB. Then I could go to the embassy and from the review that I read, it would take only a few minutes, so afterwards I could go to Santa Monica Pier because it was close, just around 35 minutes by bus, and it’s been forever since the last time I went to a beac. I thought that afterwards I could go straight to the Indonesian Consulate-General in Los Angeles (KJRI LA) to pray and rest as well as waiting for the Iftar and tarawih prayers while waiting for my return bus on the same day at 11.50pm. I even emailed them (KJRI LA) about it, to inquire about Iftar and tarawih on the first day of ramadan, and thankfully they replied saying that, yes, they did have the event. I was that prepared. I was really happy and proud of myself for ensuring everything before the D day. That was originally the plan. Everything sounded perfect, right? But, well, it wasn’t.
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