And so we begin again...

Well, I’m back in Czech, safe and sound and naturally that means it’s time for things to start going wrong! Last year when I went in to get my Visa they sort of warned me that I was nearly out of pages for Visas. It doesn’t really make any sense to me, because I still have three blank pages, but rather than saying “Visa” they say “Ammendments and Endorsements.” Whatever that means anyway. So all year as I was traveling I was hoping no one would stamp that last Visa page. And they didn’t. It was perfect. I did my traveling, I decided to stay another year, and I still had a Visa page open. That is, until I arrived in Prague and the lady in the airport, having no concern for the state of my Visa, stamped the very LAST Visa page...
Despite much praying that it would somehow all figure it’s own way out, when I arrived at the Foreign Police yesterday the officer flipped through my passport several times, desperately looking for an empty Visa page, only to tell me in no uncertain terms that she could not give me my Visa. My heart sank. I saw my Visa. It was sitting right there in front of me, but it was not to be mine! The only solution, spending 4 days in Prague this weekend so that I can be there Friday morning to apply for extra pages in person, and then it sounds like I won’t be able to get my passport back until Monday. Can’t say that exactly makes me happy. And by not exactly, I mean not at all. I was already frustrated that I had to spend my first weekend back in Prague for a business meeting, but I definitely didn’t want to have to be there two extra days as well! I mean, it all works out fairly smoothly since I had to go there anyway, and since school doesn’t start until Tuesday, but it would be rather nice to have a bit more time to settle in and prepare for classes. I mean, I only finally finished unpacking this morning, and now I’m already repacked for this trip! Ugh!
So rather than slowly breaking in to life in Czech, I’m off to Prague already this afternoon.
Other than that, things have been going pretty well. It looks like I will have most of my same classes from last year, so that’s nice. It will be people I know. Of course that sort of changes the “get to know each other” activites I usually do at the beginning of the year, but I can hopefully come up with some sort of nice review, and “tell me how your summer was” questions. I’ve been pretty busy between spending time with Mark and my new teammates...only so many hours in the day, and jet lag doesn’t like to make things any easier. But such is life, and eventually all these extra things will make sense I’m hoping.
All this to say, I’m back in Cheb, the weather is beautiful, and there is never a dull moment.
I’m still hoping to update a little more on the summer I forgot to write about...it will come slowly, but I did take a lot of pictures, so they really should be shared. From family time to the process of being turned into a more domesticated bird it was a pretty crazy and insanely fast two months. And now we begin again...