Each one of the trips overseas has come with a unique set of challenges. For China, it wasn’t clear that everyone would have their visas until the day before Thanksgiving—and we left two days after. For India, the schedule itself was tight. I taught my last class of the semester on a Monday night. The next afternoon, I hopped on an airplane. Two days later, at one in the morning, I was to land in Bangalore. Interviews started the next day, so if anything had gone wrong with the timing, the whole thing would be a mess.
The tight schedule with India compounded the challenges with Brazil. My passport was out of my hands while India granted me a visa (an incredibly smooth process), so I couldn’t start the Brazil visa process before that trip because that would run the risk of not getting my passport back in time to go to India. So, I had to wait to file the paperwork with Brazil until I was back from India, which left about a month for it to be processed.
That would have been fine, except it turned out that a lot of the Brazilian consulate staff in the US was on strike. This delayed all paperwork that went on in the country. Once again, it wasn’t clear whether everything would come together on time. Luckily late in May, I got some good news: my visa would be ready on June 11. I already had a flight booked on the 16, so suddenly this was looking like smooth sailing.
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