One of the many milestones of any abroad experience is jumping through all of the bureaucratic hoops to gain access to the country. Well on Friday, I must have improved my vertical leap by at least 8 inches with all of the jumping that I had to do. First off, in this technologically-driven world dominated by e-mail and internet, the French consulate still requires you to travel IN PERSON to your nearest consulate. With mine being NYC, that meant a 3 hour bus ride and a place to stay. Thankfully, I have a good friend who lives right in Manhattan and so I decided to make a nice weekend trip to the city.
After a bit of bushwhacking through Central Park, and a long wait outside of the consulate in the rain sans umbrella, I finally was allowed into the consulate to wait in, you guessed it, another line. The silence of the office was interrupted only by what I assumed to be French curse words and enraged tones, as time after time people were being DENIED their visa because they forgot to make a copy of a form. So there I stand, forms in hand, sweat beginning to form on my brow, hoping that I hadn't forgotten to make a copy of that attestation or proof of student status. Getting to the front of the line, I was horrified to learn that I had the WRONG form. After a few scary moments of being afraid that I was going to be turned away and forced to return at a later date, I was told that I just had to fill out a separate form...that was completely in French. If you've read this blog, you're well aware that I am not at all familiar with the language (don't remind me) and thankfully received a translation soon thereafter. The rest of the visa application process went smoothly, except that I learned that I have to return AGAIN sometime between now and my departure date just to pick up my processed application! Nice to meet you too, France.
Anyways, the rest of my weekend was spent being a tourist. Getting overpriced cannolis in Little Italy, seeing art in the Chelsea district, walking over the Brooklyn Bridge, going on a tri-borough run, walking through SoHo, eating M&M's at the Hershey store, and seeing the new pedestrian Times Square (an AHA moment followed when I found out it was named such because the New York Times building used to be there) all left me with a very Holden Caulfield-like weekend. It was a great time, but its nice to be back and stationary in one place for more than 8 hours.
As for this upcoming week, I've just got a lot of work (I'm interning at the Department of Environmental Conservation's Office of Climate Change and working part-time at Coldstone Ice Cream) and then a New York State Habitat for Humanity conference on Saturday. I'll be sure to report on how that goes. Until then.
Au revoir,
Justin
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