I feel like beating my head against the wall...

So I've been emailing the Smithsonian External Affairs i/c in an effort to see if my visa could get approved and my passport returned before I'm due to leave on Thursday. Now it seems like I have to request for an overnight delivery of my passport from D.C., without the visa in it, and for my visa to be sent to the airport in Panama (if it gets approved by then...else, I guess I might be deported...). The story doesn't end there. Even though the visa is approved, I can't get it attached at the airport immigration. They have to confiscate my passport, and I have to go to the Immigration office to pick it up after 2 working days. My connecting flight is supposed to be on Friday, 3pm, and the course starts on Saturday morning. Apparently I can't fly without my passport too. If I wait till Monday, I'll miss 3 days of lessons. And it's the intro to sponge taxonomy and morphology too! Sighs... All these madness, while I'm trying to study for the oral exam on Monday and keeping the 'big picture' of marine biology in mind...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New York...New York...

Image
Sorry about the long wait folks...I'm finally blogging about my arrival in the States. July 31, 6am: Stumbled out of the Thai Airways plane into JFK Airport. After 20+ hours in cramped and dark conditions, I'm finally in the US!! Decided to stopover in New York as I've never been here before and wanted to see all the famous sights. So here they are- Manhattan Took a shuttle from the airport down to Manhattan. At first we thought it would be the quickest way, but we went all over Manhattan dropping people off at various hotels and hostels, so it was almost 10am by the time we checked in at Harlem YMCA. Not too bad, except that there was no a/c and NY was experiencing a heatwave!! It was sweltering in the small room. Washed up a little and proceeded to our first destination... The Empire State Building! Well, that's the view from the top. For some reason I don't seem to have a photo of the building itself. Think I was jetlagged and starting to get mild heatstroke....Y...
Read more

Does this mean something?

Something struck me while I was preparing tomorrow's lesson plans for Genetics lab and thinking up wicked questions for next week's quiz for my students.. (well, not really, I'm actually a softie at heart who wants her students to do well, hahaha...). For someone who always professed to having a mild phobia to teaching, I've been doing a lot of teaching in the last 6-7 years or so! It started with being a nature guide talking to all those strangers about wildlife and conservation, to conducting sessions on how to be a nature guide, and all those courses on Reef Check and whatnot, plus instructing for educational companies like Creative Kids, where I had to teach primary and secondary students, all the way to trainee teachers and full-time teachers! Recently have also been teaching at NUS and here in Wilmington! I had a 'what are you planning to do with your life after you graduate' talk with my current supervisor recently, and mentioned that I don't really s...
Read more