I'm convinced Estonia hates me at this point. I'm at the "so over this, get me on a damn plane" stage.
First off, no Lapland, Finland for me. I'm trying to be mature about the whole thing, but let's get real, I'm upset. Items on the itinerary include Tipi tent with hot drinks and barbecue, sauna and arctic swim, use of ice-fishing gear, visit to Santa Claus village, husky sledge ride and, most importantly of all, seeing the Northern Lights. Unfortunately, I do not have the proper documentation to travel on the bus. I'm frustrated my military ID does not count as an American ID because it's issued by the Federal government. What else do these people want from me? I don't think they realize when they say they want an American ID they mean only a passport because I can't think of anything else that would satisfy these people.
Fortunately, I was able to get another girl to take my place so I'm not out four hundred dollars. After taking their sweet time to email me back, I received an email at nearly three pm that I had to give them her name, nationality, phone number, email, and birthday in order to be able to change the name on the reservation by four pm. The other girl was busy during this short window of time and didn't see my Facebook messages, so I did some Facebook research and used my email/phone in the email. Luckily they were able to change the reservation. As disappointed as I am that I can't go, at least I was able to make someone's day. She's really excited to go so that makes me feel a little better. In reality, this situation was unavoidable. I had to hand over my passport to get my Russian visa and there is no way I was going to miss out on the Russia trip. The only thing that could have been done differently was figuring out my documentation was an issue a few weeks ago so this whole changing names on the reservation thing wouldn't have been so stressful.
Now for this stupid residence permit. When I got back to the dorm from the cake place with Laura (I can feel your judgement and I don't care), I found a letter in Estonian from the police in Estonian. Helpful, very helpful. I asked the woman at the front if she could read it for me. She said the letter was saying I had been approved for my permit but I had to wait until April 11th to go the police station.
WHAT. THE. HELL?????
No one else had to wait this long once they got their approval to go to get the actual permit and ID. What did I do to wrong these people? Do I need to sacrifice something to a god to get this damn permit in a reasonable amount of time? At least I get my passport back next week from the travel agency so I can get my new debit card from the bank and have access to my money again.
At least I have a four day weekend since my Monday/Tuesday class is canceled. Usually my weekend is spent reading articles/writing an essay for this class, so now I can spend time catching up on other work and actually getting started on my ten page essay that's due on April fourth.
Ariail, Laura and I are making dinner tonight and are going to make plans for a trip to Helsinki for sometime. Hopefully this will cheer me up and maybe it will be more fun than going on the preplanned Finland trip.
Hopefully, my next post will be more upbeat and will have less first world problems I am complaining about.
(On the way home from the grocery store with Ariail and Laura, we were crossing the street at a crosswalk. One car that was driving down the road stopped, as they have to because we have the right away, but a car in the other lane accelerated to try to hit me. If I wouldn't have jumped, he would have. Thanks world, I needed that.)
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