When Bureaucracy Works

My visa arrived today!!!!  A hearty thanks to the Ghanaian consulate in DC for completing this mysterious transaction in a timely and officious manner.  It's a bit unsettling to send one's passport off with a $100 cashier's check (granted, in a trackable envelope) with a second trackable envelope enclosed, hoping to the gods of bureaucracy that you are correctly following the detailed instructions and the whole thing gets there safely and returned to you.  Well, by virtue of the trackable envelope, I knew it arrived safely, but I didn't hear anything else.  I was just starting to fret yesterday and today, and then as I left the house this afternoon to head downtown, up rolls the FedEx truck.  Hooray!  I wouldn't say bureaucracy is a beautiful thing when it works, but it is gratifying, and you feel like maybe you pulled one over on the whole Murphy's Law-ness of these types of things.

Since I seem to be keeping a running to-do list here, this is where we are:

*decide on anti-malarial and call ARC for prescription
*pay program balance
*get travel/health insurance
*get TDap vaccination at doctor
*figure out my work absences
*hope my visa and passport are returned to me

That's what I call some progress!

Preparing...

Thirty-eight days away from leaving - I realized this when I woke up this morning and took my 2nd of 4 typhoid pills.  (You can get typhoid immunization in pill form and it lasts for 5 years instead of 2 years, which is how long the injection immunity lasts.  And when you're given the option to do 4 shots instead of 5 in one sitting, and you only have 2 arms, you go ahead and take one in pill form.)

I dreamt last night that I arrived in Ghana having not finished the typhoid pill series, and that Hank had somehow come with me.  I was worrying about him being safe, me getting typhoid, and how I was going to handle all of it.  Thank you, anxiety dreams.  Maybe that's my subconscious preparing me.  The difficult piece seems to be doing productive things to emotionally prepare while still being bogged down in current work stuff.  My day-to-day is still the same, even though big things are coming, and I feel like I don't have time to get ready because I'm having to deal with ongoing job stuff.

Besides emotion management and packing, I still need to:
-Pay the balance of my program fee.
-Find out if my current insurance covers international travel/health and if not, get some.
-Get a Tetanus shot.
-Decide on my anti-malarial and get the prescription called in.
-Figure out exactly how I'm taking my absences at work...hm.
-Keep my fingers crossed that my passport gets returned from the Ghanaian consulate in DC with my visa insert!

And, I keep telling people that I'm "thinking" about doing a blog, when I am actually doing it (the 2nd post makes it real I suppose) but nobody wants to read these sporadic ramblings yet.  So if it's July and you're back-reading, oops!