life's adventures This is the story of my wanderings through Asia

On Sunday I received my brand spanking new passport, so pretty and clean and new. It came with instructions as to transferring my current Chinese working Visa, and also a sticker to put on my old passport. I did this, and lopped off the corner in the process, as the picture showed me to do, to show clearly that the passport is old. Stupid policy, needs to be more specific. This action caused me a lot of grief and a few mentally stressful days. So My first trip to the PSB to tranfer the Visa was on Monday, the officials laughed at me for cutting my passport, then they showed me a teeny sliver of the visa had also been chopped. This was where my gut started to plummet and the flights I had bought merely hours earlier were in jeopardy, along with my contract with the school and all my carefully dreamed of near-future plans. Buckets of silent sobby tears, breaking heart for the feeling of uselessness, and anger toward bureaucracy in China. I was informed of (my stupidity) the cancellation of my visa through accidental damage and was distraught. Luckily I had friends to provide hugs and support, and wonderful parents who sympathised, dad even consulted his contacts in NZ! Matters didn't improve though, as one colleague informed me they couldn't fix the situation on Tuesday, in fact I had to stop working and getting paid if I didn't have a valid Visa. Thousands of dollars lost to this mistake, I started to fume. I called around friends, and friends of friends to see what I could do. Another visit to the PSB early Wednesday morning, a better translator and friend who explained what I needed to do to legally leave the country, and then a sad afternoon with my favourite class, big hugs with lots of tiny kids, it was more than slightly heart-wrenching. We set a time to meet at the local police office this morning, and after a horrible night tossing and turning, I made it bright and early with a winning attitude for the day. From 8.30am to 2pm we waited here, waited there, no progress or success in getting documents in order, more of the waiting, sudoku on the ipod and yawns aplenty. Finally we met the man at the PSB whom we should have called at the start. Lots of Chinese explanations roughly translated to: he can see it was a mistake and he will take care of it. I nearly fainted. Strange, as I was not expecting it, I had even begun to look forward to my new hastily made plans in case I had to skip the country in a hurry. Back on track now though! Roller coaster ride indeed. What to expect when working in China..Unless you have someone who owes someone who knows someone ...Guanxi... you're screwed.