I believe three days is the blog's record for longest period of inactivity, and I don't plan to break that, because, well, three is a nice, round number.

I did my u.s. visa interview on Monday. I had to wake up at 5:30 in the morning and line up - in the rain - outside the American embassy, and then stand in line after line after line after line (number of lines is accurate so far) for four hours. It was really depressing, because no one (except my interviewer) seemed to speak English there, and it was the American embassy, and at one point some guy had his son urinate over the gutter because he didn't want to get out of line. While I was waiting in the final line this lady doing her interview (it was somehow classist; I got to interview in a broom closet, while everyone else talked to a booth in the same room as the one everyone else was waiting in, so they didn't have any privacy whatsoever) said, a little too loudly, "of course i will come back in the philippines, i promise, promise," and for some reason, everyone who happened to hear laughed at that.

So after, what, five minutes in line, I anticipated my interview obsessively in a Kurtz kind of way. And long after my legs had liquified, it was finally my turn.

interviewer: So, where'd you go to high school?
me: uh... the International School Manila.
interviewer: You went to ISM? And you're going to Yale?
me: yes.
interviewer: What do you plan to major in?
me: I don't know yet.
interviewer: okay, I'm giving you a visa. take this slip and form and line up [for five more hours] at Gate 4.


I never thought it much of a disadvantage to being a TCK (third culture kid), because everyone else around me was one too. But suddenly there's something a little eerie about it.

Oh wow, the coincidence. Just as I typed that last sentence I got a message on my phone from the embassy's courier service (what will the Philippines do without texting) saying my visa's about to be released.

posted by Tae-Yeoun Keum   [8:18 PM]

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