The kind of week when you call the orthodontist to make an appointment for your daughter, and not only is the English-speaking receptionist there to listen to your needs, but she is able to clear a space in a calendar that only last week was packed until the end of August.
The kind of week when your homeowner's insurance agrees to cover the loss of your son's bike, which was stolen -- after being left unlocked -- from a property in the next town. I wouldn't have given us a nickel.
Could these showers of blessing have anything to do with the fact that the sun is finally shining on Geneva, after months of what our neighbors are telling is is the wettest and coldest spring in history? (Since we've moved here, we've experienced the city's hottest summer, coldest winter, latest spring. The Swiss are proud of their endurance in the face of meteorological adversity.)
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| No meteorological adversity here. |
In addition to basking in the sun and the brighter mood it imparts, the aliens have been experiencing the world of travel. We thought we knew a lot about travel already, but going from Switzerland to Spain is only minimally more challenging than driving from Ohio to Indiana. Traveling Western Europe is for dilettantes. This summer, we are experiencing TRAVEL (some of us will experience the actual voyaging part, while others just get to be in on the background work). Johanna leaves for Uganda on July 7. She's going with a group of teens from our church to work at an orphanage in Watoto. It took an impressive amount of begging on her part to convince us that the trip was a good idea. Our concerns, though, were more matters of timing than of fear, either for her safety or for the hurdles it would take to get her Africa-ready. Meanwhile, Drew will depart August 10 for India with a team from my parents' church in Cincinnati. Again, in agreeing to (okay, strongly encouraging), the trip, we gave no thought to the preparation involved in heading to what apparently we are to call countries with "emerging economies."
First, there are visas. We did have to get a visa to come to Switzerland, but that's only because we were staying. Eric, of course, has all kinds of visas in his passport, but some smart administrator always takes care of obtaining those. Uganda and India are both countries that require visas from US nationals living in Switzerland. So I collected 4 cm x 4 cm photos (on a light background, no smiling), travel itineraries, residence cards. I filled out (or made the kids fill out) application forms that threatened legal penalties for forgetting to dot the i's. I also made my surprisingly successful trip to the post office, since the Indian consulate accepts payment only directly into their account through the postal service. You have to pay BEFORE you apply for the visa, and if you mess up the visa application or pay the wrong amount, TOO BAD FOR YOU. No refunds. Drew and I went to the Indian Consulate yesterday. It did occur to me to be thankful that we live in Geneva, where consulates and embassies abound. We could have had to make a long drive or send our documents by mail, necessitating a long wait. I told Drew that, despite the nail-biting care with which I checked and rechecked the list of items to submit, there was a good chance we would be missing something and the trip would be for naught. As it turned out, I was right and wrong. We had Drew's Swiss residence card, but what the consulate wanted was a copy of the card. Did the consulate have a photocopier? No. No? An office without a photocopier seemed unusual, but I didn't bother questioning, because the intimidatingly reserved man behind the window directed us to a nearby copy shop, where, for 40 centimes, we made our own copies, returned, and received the coveted rubber stamp. The man gave us a number and told us to come back between 5 and 6 p.m. on June 10 to pick up the visa'd passport. He did not mention how many unmarked bills we should bring to the pickup.
I gave Johanna's materials to a youth leader at church, who is taking care of getting all the visas. I hope that will proceed hitch-free.
The visas were a spring breeze compared to the vaccinations. We had been advised to go to the Tropical Medicine Center at the University of Geneva Hospital, and we had been told that there could be a wait. I decided to avoid the wait by showing up before the center even opened. Many other people had the same idea, only they showed up even earlier. We were number 64. One child and I read our books peacefully (at least we got seats -- those who arrived after the center opened weren't so lucky), while the other child, whom I will not identify, proceeded to become grouchier and grouchier, driven by a mortal fear of shots which was only intensified by the wait. We overhead a woman who was frustrated with the receptionist about something that involved an "opération de changement de sexe" (I am not making this up). We also amused ourselves for part of the time by trying to guess which doctor we would get. We hoped it wouldn't be the dark-haired man with the glasses, because he seemed impatient and difficult to understand. Of course, after two hours, it was he who called out "soixante-quatre." He was impatient, especially with my attempts to speak French. He told me that he would speak French, since he didn't speak much English, but I should speak in English. For some reason, my brain found this arrangement challenging, and he snapped "English" at me when I accidentally tried to use the French word for "orphanage." He was also difficult to understand, partly because he was not a native French speaker and pronounced some words very strangely (it takes one to know one). We spent several minutes trying to figure out whether Johanna needed a vaccination for "rash." After he explained that it is what happens when an animal bites you, we understood it to be rabies ("rage" in French). We decided that she'd probably be able to get the medical attention that she needed at the orphanage (that's where I became confused about what language I was supposed to be speaking and got reprimanded).
I will say that the impatient doctor did spend 45 minutes with us and only charged us for 15, and that perhaps a passel of non-francophones needing shots for two different developing economies would be a lot for anyone to take on a Wednesday afternoon. We left after two shots for Drew and three for Johanna, bearing prescriptions for malaria pills and diarrhea medication, pamphlets about being careful in the sun, and lists of medical supplies to take along. I was also bearing a significantly lighter wallet. As a consolation, however, impatient glasses man had given us our very own yellow "carnets de vaccination" to replace our messy photocopies of the kids' vaccination records (at which he had sniffed scoffingly). Now we feel very organized and official.
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| Members of the Uganda group from Crossroads Church before their 140 km fundraising bike trip around Lake Geneva. |
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