Got It All Turned In

I got a call while I was teaching.  I turned off the phone.  As things wrapped up I noticed that I’d had four calls, all from an unknown number.  My Wechat had been humming as well.  It was the young lady from the Russian visa processing center.  Because I had three passports that the courier service was sending, they insisted on sending such things in three separate letters.  This, would require three times the fee, of course. 

This young lady graciously offered to front the fee for me, as I’d explained to her I was teaching.  This, or I could just pick them up myself tomorrow, instead, in person.  I’d been leaning towards this anyway.  The best the courier service could offer was that it “might” be delivered Friday night.  Might also be Saturday morning.  I had held off getting a ticket regardless. 

This young lady was off the charts in providing customer-service.  I’d ran out of time processing the visa the first time.  I had budgeted two hours before I was to start my class.  I’d gone to the consulate, when I shouldn’t have.  Then I hustled over to this visa processing center.  Handlers in line before me had multiple six-packs of passports, cases of passports.  They were not going to be quick.  Just before my time was up, I was told to head to the line where, uncharacteristically this person had handwritten a large sign saying “Driana.”  No one else had bothered to name themselves. 

I was hopelessly out of time.  My class was beginning in ten minutes.  We talked in Chinese and then switched to English.  I assumed she spoke Russian as well.  When I complimented her on having three languages she corrected me and told me her mother tongue was Kazakh.  Cool. She pointed out about seven things hopelessly wrong with my application that would need to be redone.  This would mean hours of work this evening.  Once the application was printed it couldn’t be edited. 

The next day, when I returned, there were still mistakes.  This application is hard!  But she corrected them and got it all turned in.  Then she asked me to write the address of my residence in Chinese for where the package should be sent.  For me to do so, would take a very long time indeed.  She, who she confirmed had only been studying Chinese for a few years, penned it off quickly.  I was crest fallen and impressed.  Before I left, I gave her my card and told her if she was ever looking for part time project management work, I was always looking for service- oriented people who spoke four languages. 

Thursday 5/31/18