One of those things

I realize I'm getting this out of order, but actually that seems kind of appropriate, because there is nothing linear about working on moving to China. It is a society that works in ever constricting circles, something I find intriguing and even interesting, but something that takes getting used to and I'm not there yet.

But today the "setback" was entirely all-American. We received an auto-generated notice that our paperwork for our visa applications had not been received. Now, by paperwork, it left out that it was all four passports and our daughter's original (irreplaceable) Chinese passport. I emailed. I called.

Nothing.

Only that pit in my stomach that the documents were lost.

I called Adele who handles all our UPS shipping and she informed me it had indeed been delivered, but NOT signed-for. There was confusion about the delivery being to an office or not. So, no signature.

A deeper pit in my stomach. No way to track the final whereabouts of all our passports and application forms, invitation letter... EVERYTHING we need to keep the visa situation moving.

And I waited.

Out of patience, I tried to call again, six hours later. The call was answered, and a very nice man assured me the documents had indeed arrived, etc. etc. etc. I didn't hear much of the rest, I was celebrating internally that our passports still existed in the known physical universe.

He had forgotten to check his voice mail -- so hadn't returned my earlier call of panic.

I'm back to work now, breathing easier.
But I'm reminded, nothing about this will be easy: not even mailing some passports.