a state senator, a japanese restaurant, and the permanent representative of mauritius to the UN

All walk into a bar. No wait, that's a different story.

Today's story is about my first official victory over crisis in my job as a study abroad coordinator.

The background here is that working in study abroad is (or feels like, anyway) mostly about preventing or putting out fires. It's about the vast, amazing array of new problems, silly questions ("no, you can't travel to Brazil on your Argentina tourist visa. They're actually two whole separate countries."), and amazing pickles our students manage to have and get themselves into. Never a dull moment. It's part of what makes this job simultaneously stressful and fun.

Right now a colleague is out of the office so I'm covering as point-person for some of her programs, and yesterday I received a phone call from a student in one of those programs saying that she'd sent her visa application to the wrong address (there was a typo in the suite number) and now she has neither a visa nor her passport. She's supposed to leave the country for her program on Sunday.

Doh.

Some of the prerequisites for my job, as for being a good traveler in general, are flexibility, the ability to see humor in most situations, and the perspective to know the world will not end no matter what the outcome of a given situation. Also, the knowledge that flipping out rarely helps and often hurts your ability to solve a problem. In general, I have these attributes. This is the first time they were really tested in this job (they were tested plenty of times in my last job, so I wasn't too worried).

Okay, so the Bolivian consulate is in a big office buliding in New York City, in Suite 701, and she sent her application to Suite 801. My first thought was, gee, if the typo was in our visa instructions, that would mean that potentially ALL the students sent their applications to the wrong address. Which would be awesome. Since consulates often approve visas at the very last minute, we tell students not to worry if they don't get it until the week before they travel. Um, I'm glad this student worried, and called the consulate.

So, first step: call the Bolivian consulate. I spoke with a lovely woman who confirmed that they had issued visas for the other students whose names I gave her. HUGE sigh of relief.

Next step: find out who the heck is in Suite 801 and has absconded with this kid's passport. This required some detective work. Thank God for the internet. Having been unsuccessful in turning up anything through a Google search for the exact address and suite number, I decided to randomly call other businesses in the building and see if they knew who is in that suite, or could connect me to the building manager.

I started with a State Senator's office in the building, because they're there to help the public, right? Unfortunately the person I spoke with said the secretary, who would have the building manager's number, was out. Next I called a Japanese restaurant in the basement and thoroughly confused the woman who answered the phone. My next stop was the office of the Permanent Representative of Mauritius to the United Nations, who was gloriously helpful. From there I was able to call the building manager, who said "there is no Suite 801, but the Bolivian Misson to the UN is in Suite 802".

ah-HA.

So I called the Bolivian Mission office and spoke with a woman who insisted that she didn't have any visa applications, until I pressed and mentioned that the passport was in there and could she please double-check. Lo and behold, she remembered receiving a package with a passport. I ask that she please please please take it down to the consulate as the student needs her visa immediately. After explaining that no, I can't come pick it up because in fact I'm several states away, she promised to deliver it.

Luckily when I check in with the consulate a couple hours later and find they don't have it, the wonderful consular officer promises to go get it from the Mission and issue the visa right away. I called the student with this final update and walked around my office looking for someone to celebrate with. I solved my first official crisis!

Now if only the U.S. Passport Agency would get a move on and issue the passports of those student who are supposed to leave in a few days and who applied for their passports a very very long time ago. We get frustrated with other countries consular services, but the one that really drives us nuts is our own.