lo and behold, the second, and third, visa appointments at the consulate have ended. you guessed it, unsuccessfully. the second, because they found that in the documents from the school where the stipend they're giving me is mentioned, it doesn't say per month, so it looks in writing like i don't have enough financial support for the duration of the visa (naturally it's a monthly stipend, but the documents just don't say it. fabulous). that revelation initiated a flurry of phone calls to the boston consulate, emails to the program, boston trying to get a hold of the visa office in LA to explain that the stipend really is monthly, and finally, in the school promising that they were going to fax some sort of verification to the consulate by monday, today, which was my third appointment. of course, by my 12:20 appointment time, there was no fax. surprising? not at all.
this means one of several things. i emailed the person at the school in italy, asking what happened with the fax, so option one is that the consulate gets the fax and i can try to apply again. problem being, though, my flight is a week from wednesday and there's almost zero chance of getting the visa by then. so, i could change my flight, costing me over 250 dollars, but even after changing it i wouldn't necessarily be sure of getting the visa by the changed date. at this point, the best option seems to be to leave without the visa and deal with the repercussions when in italy. even the program admitted the possibility of some of us having to go over there with no visas, and this has happened with other interns from the LA jurisdiction, so it's not the end of the world to go without. though after 90 days i either would have to border-hop or come all the way back to california to attempt, potentially unsuccessfully, to obtain the visa yet again. a mess? slightly.
so for now i'm awaiting a response from the school to see what they say about all this and what the next move should be. i definitely can't say i haven't tried, despite being completely unsucessful. and as long as i avoid riding a bus without a bus ticket (or getting caught riding, rather), causing public disturbances, and doing anything else that might require the display of a visa, or lack thereof, i should be, and am told such by other people who have gone without visas, totally fine in italy.
it is enlightening, though, to gauge the changes in my reactions every time something has gone awry in this awful, horrid process. the first response after the first attempt was to try to argue with the visa woman, get upset, and want to break things. the second time there was the temptation to just hunker down and crawl into a hole and forget this business. and this time around, i had almost zero response, as if i had finally reached a threshold of frustration. this time all i could do was laugh, unphased, as if finally coming to the realization that i am simply a tragic character in a very darkly-comical play. unbeknownst to me, obviously.
today was simply the climax in the plot, underscored by such events as missing bus stops, almost having one bus break down in the heat of LA, not eating all day, and finally digging into some corn flakes at 8:30 pm only to discover that a maggot has decided to take up swimming lessons in my bowl, along with who knows what other friends of his who had already been ingested. yet early today, realizing my own tragedy gave me a strange sense of overwhelming peace and connectedness with fellow bus-riders and the people i came into contact with. as if reaching new lows broke pride and walls, leaving only a sense of how my destiny, however different from the next person's, is still caught up in everyone else's.
it has not, granted, been my day, my week, or even my month. but, cliches aside, i am where i am supposed to be. at the moment i am a tired, frustrated, visa-less, maggot-eating, soon-to be "illegal" in italy. but i've since realized that that works just fine for me.
here's to hoping it's up from here.
