Success!

Guess who's fully legal in the Czech Republic? ;-)

Yep! It's me! Yahhh!!!!!!!!!!

I woke up at the ungodly hour of 5am this Tuesday morning to head on down to the dreaded Foreign Police again. It had been a full 2 weeks since my first incident, and I was ready (well, mostly) to jump back into that cesspool again and give it another go.

It was still dark when I arrived there at 6am, but I was near the front of the line and was determined to keep it that way. A full hour and a half passed until the doors opened, and during this time it rained off and on. Not exactly a pleasant morning to be standing outside in a queue! And of course, as expected, as soon as the doors opened pandemonium broke out. I was squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezed like you can't imagine but I managed to worm my way in relatively quickly.

I made my way up the stairs, being fairly aggressive in trying to maintain my much-coveted position. When I got to the now infamous cranky Ticket Box Lady I once again showed her my little piece of paper with my request in Czech...and this time she actually presented me with a ticket! Woohoo! This alone is reason enough for celebration!

I had ticket #17 and I was quite pleased with this. I sat myself down in the chaotic waiting room and awaited my turn. This blond middle-aged woman sat down next to me and for some reason she offered to trade me tickets! She didn't speak a word of English (in my mind she was from "somewhere east of here", but I'm going to go with Ukraine) but she had ticket #8! No idea why she wanted to trade tix, but hey I'm not going to say no for getting a better spot! How nice of her! Thank you, Random Ukrainian Woman! :-)

Only 20 or so minutes later my number was called and I went up to the desk to have my visa registered. Surprisingly, the woman behind that counter wasn't pure evil in a human form as I imagined all Foreign Police employees to be. In fact (and brace yourself cause you never see this in Czech civil service) I think she may have even smiled at me! Be still my beating heart!

Only a few minutes later, after some paper-shuffling and a couple fancy stamps in my passport, I was outta there! YES! I'm done! Good riddance Foreign Police! Hope it's a while before I have to go there again... I went home and headed straight back to bed. A few more hours of sleep before class seems like a very appropriate way to celebrate my success, if you ask me! ;-)