Mi vida

What a pain!!

The Chinese consulate is evil!! I am not a fan of how things work around there. So here is my whining, complaining story. I know some of you have heard it but I decided to blog it for posterity's sake. I also am trying to avoid doing my work right now :). Well I left my apartment yesterday around 6 a.m. to go to New York City to get my visa for China. I don't remember if I said this already, but I have to go to NYC to get a visa just to visit China for a few days. They don't accept anything through the mail so I had to go in person. They also have limited hours on limited days. Well I had yesterday off so I decided to go into NYC to get it done. I went online to find out about the application process and followed every last word that I read. I drove an hour then I took a train for an hour and a half. I got there later than I wanted. I wanted to get there first thing in the morning but I was late because I had to do some errands. I got there and it was a madhouse. I had to wait for 5 hours before my number was called. I got up to the window and was denied for my visa. They gave me a list of more stuff I need including my bank statement, a letter from my job saying I am on vacation, and a letter from Marc saying that I am going to be visiting him. You also have to hand in your original plane tickets and hotel reservations. It's nice that they can change the rules like that whenever they feel like it. So I left the consulate and had to take my train back to my car and then drive the last hour in pouring down rain. I didn't get home until 8 p.m. I wasn't the only one who got denied a visa. A bunch of people were having problems with the consulate. Some people even drove 5, 6, 7 hours to get there. Can you imagine? I can't believe how hard it is too get into the country.

So for those of you who know me......the next part may come as a surprise to you. Y'all know that I am anti-American in a lot of ways. I don't agree with a lot of our policies, how we treat many countries of the world, and how we control most of the world's wealth. ......But I do have to say that it is horrible of China to make it so tough to get into their country when we send them many of our educated to teach their children English and we buy many of their products. I got a small glimpse of the relations between Americans and Chinese at the consulate. Most of the guards were Americans. They were rude to the Chinese people and the Chinese were rude back. They were so nice to me though and didn't even look at my passport when they saw that it was American. So I gotta go and eat dinner but there is a little about my hassle of a day that helped to keep me grumpy.

posted by Ninita @ 5:02 PM