A tourist to Zambia.

Underneath my supposed calm and understanding exterior:

• You can enter Zambia as a tourist... hmm... okay... does this include a tourist itinerary? A Christmas vacation perhaps...
• However, not sure if we can get you a flight in the immediate future, since it is the start of high season… umm, what?! By immediate future, is that this week? December? January?
• Apparently, original passport photos were not sent/received... hmm... someone is walking around with eight scary headshots of me
• Travel agents pulled some magic... your flight has been rebooked for Thursday
• Thursday?! This Thursday!
• Damn, now I really need to get things in order... crazy how an uneventful weekend was able to sufficiently tuck Zambia away in my brain.
  

With this kafuffle, I have joined the family visa mishaps club... just a week ago Mom’s visa got stamped with a date a week old, effectively shortening her one month visa to three weeks. Shitters.

I should probably be more proactive and figure out what a tourist visa entails. And, aside from the photos, what exactly is holding up the work permit? An issue, which I apparently need to approach with caution. Hmm... okay... what? I’m not going to try and decipher what that means from an email. Anyway, my new departure date is Thursday, November 30. Let’s hope it is an actual, get on the airplane, leaving date.

ps. M is for Monday and Mefloquine. Maybe a dreamy night ahead... as long as it isn't about missing airplanes or invalid visas!

Expect the expected.

One more day until Zambia. I am temporarily back to an undefined number of days until Zambia. A week ago, the documents needed to process my work permit were held at customs and could not be released. I have no idea what that actually means. Perhaps, trying to be serious in my passport photos might have been too frightening a sight. Lonely Planet writes, "In Zambia anything that can go wrong usually will. But until it does, there's no point in worrying." Oops... I guess worrying about my visa weeks ago was not to my advantage. Although, I'm surprisingly not all that frustrated or disappointed (okay, maybe a little, but subdued thanks to mefloquine). I will get to Zambia eventually, just probably not for another week or two. However, the thought of longer than that gives me a panicky feeling, so I hope I will not to entertain that. Now what to do for the time being... options: (a) renovate house with Dad, (b) ski, (c) work... more money = more travel possibilities.