All night I was tossing and turning because I realized at 9pm last night that I needed to have gotten one of the documents for my student visa notorized. I left messages on about a dozen Houston notaries' voicemails in hopes that one would call me back before my 9am Visa appointment downtown at the Consulate.
Due to time constraints, my mother and I decided to go directly to the Consulate and just deal with it--which was the right decision, because it didn't matter after all. But what did matter was that I had filled out the wrong visa form and had to fill out another three copies by hand. That was the fastest I've ever filled out any forms remotely legibly in my life. But I had also overlooked the requirement of making a copy of all the rest of my documents (acceptance letter, financial guarantee, blah blah).
I was already on the lady's bad side, because their printer wasn't working so I was going to get an earful whether I had all my documents or not. Then, I approached the desk at 1015am saying that I was just getting a little concerned that they had overlooked my 9am appointment. I didn't think this out of line. After screwing up the second thing, having filled out the wrong visa form, she starts chewing me out for being a twenty-two year old who doesn't know how to read (her exact words).
We had been speaking in French the whole time, and from different sides of a glass window with her speaker shut off so I could barely hear her and had to yell. Suddenly, in the middle of chewing me out in French, she decides to finally turn the speaker on and proceeds to talk about how dumb and careless students are these days, especially me, because I was the only student who has ever forgotten the copy of my other documents, blah blah. So I am sitting there, next to another girl who started getting chewed out for her passport photo being wrong, and we exchanged a look of disbelief that these two women would announce such insults, suddenly now in English over a microphone!!!, to a room full of angry, impatient visa candidates.
Not only does the woman helping the other girl go off on her; I also heard her say to her collegue--in French--that ohhhh this girl's poor father, he looks all shook up because I'm yelling at his poor, sweet innocent child. She knew the girl's father didn't speak English. Unbelievable!
Luckily I've been living out in Magnolia, Texas, for the last couple of weeks, where everyone smiles and shares family stories at the grocery store or gas station or wherever they happen to exchange words with a stranger. If I had been in Parisian mode, I would have said "Well it doesn't take a genius to fix a printer!" But no....I smile and apologize.
Final result: The woman huffs her way to the copy machine to make a copy for me and proceeds to hand it right back to me. Well gee! The little part of my ego that she had trampled on would have gladly gone without a copy for its own files. ..
Voila my jubilant experience at the Consulate. In any case, I'll get my visa tomorrow when I go back. But I just wanted to spread the word out there that new visa requirements have been added: Verbal abuse and public humiliation!
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