Visa rush

By late May we had some great news: we got an internship with the World Bank! That was very exciting but it was only the beginning of a long journey to get the logistics of our journey done. We knew the internship would start on the 1st of July and we wanted to get to Washington beforehand with some time. However, for cost reasons, we booked our flights for Monday, 30th of June. Since we still had an entire month before the flights, we thought that would be more than enough time to sort out the Visas and take care of accommodation.

Well, turns out to get a diplomatic Visa, we need the World Bank to send some forms to the Embassy. After a couple of weeks, our contacts there were kind enough to send the paperwork for us, but the Embassy requires the central HR department to take care of everything.

By this time of the year, the World Bank is packed with requests for Visas and its central services operate in a first come first serve base. To make a long story short, we spent two weeks exchanging emails with the World Bank and the American Embassy in the UK.

The paperwork was only sent on Wednesday, the 28th of June to the American Embassy in London who was already more than sick of us after so many phone calls and email exchanges. It usually takes 48 hours to process a diplomatic Visa, but Thursday for some reason was a public holiday. The stress was huge and we weren’t seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Most likely we would have to reschedule our flights and start the internship later.

Bottom line...we got our Visas Friday afternoon, just the last week day before boarding to Washington DC. What a rush!