Express Mail / VISA Fiasco!

On Friday afternoon, I shipped (Overnight) our visa applications and passports to the Kazakhstan Embassy in Washington D.C.. I wasn't expecting them to be delivered until Tuesday due to the weekend and Monday's holiday. We ABSOLUTELY have to have them in our hands by Friday so we could board the plane on Monday. On Tuesday evening, I went to the USPS website to see if it had been delivered. To my surprise, they attempted to deliver it on Saturday (but failed because the Embassy was closed). The site did not show any attempt to deliver it again on Tuesday, like they were supposed to do. I called the Kaz Embassy on Wednesday morning and was informed that they have not yet received our applications. I then called the Express mail 800 number and they gave me the number of the D.C. post office. I called the D.C. office and they told me that it would be held there for 5 days because they were not able to deliver it. If it was not picked up in 5 days, they would return it to me. They told me to call the Embassy and have them pick up their mail. When I called, I was told that they do not pick up the mail; that the USPS had to deliver it! I went back and forth with the Embassy and the D.C. post office for 45 minutes (6 calls). Neither one would budge! Needless to say, I was wasn't very happy at the response I was getting by either side. I even offered to drive 800 miles to D.C. to pick up the package myself and drop it off at the Embassy so we could have it back by Friday! Arrrggggggg.....!!! We would never have our visas by Friday, we would miss our flight; we were up the creek!

I then remembered a telephone conversation I had with a young woman at work a few months ago. She was a brand new Postal Inspector who was looking for the police to do a safety program for a group of mail carriers. I called her up and asked if she could help us out. The alternative would be that I would be forced to call my wife at work and tell her that we would NOT be going to Kazakhstan on Monday (Thank God, Patti's office moved to the ground floor last year - it wouldn't have been pretty)!! An hour later, our passports, along with our visa applications, were delivered to the Embassy. A HUGE THANK YOU to Postal Inspector, Dr. J.H.!!!! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! At 4PM, I received word that our visas had been issued and would be mailed back to us (keep your fingers crossed)!

We purchased our airline tickets on Tuesday. This is another VERY long story but I will spare you the details! We will be flying out of Albany on Monday afternoon at 2:20PM. We will travel to Washington D.C., Frankfurt Germany and arrive in Almaty, Kazakhstan at 1:00 AM on Wednesday morning (Tuesday 2PM NY time). We will have 3 1/2 hour layovers in Washington and Frankfurt, so the trip will take us only 24 hours. We will get a hotel for the night and fly to Karaganda sometime on Wednesday. We will spend the night in a hotel (or our apartment) and go to the baby house on Thursday morning (late Wednesday night).

It's going to be a very busy weekend. We have most of our stuff but we still have to pack everything. I have to load a bunch of software to our new laptop. I have to figure out how to convert our camcorder files to something that is compatible with this blog (or YouTube). I think I need some kind of conversion software. If there are any techie's out there that know how to convert files from our Cannon HG10 (using the bundled software) to something that can be used here, please let me know. This is my first camcorder and I don't have a clue!