Visa Trouble

So I spent all of yesterday trying to deal with crazy visa trouble from both New Zealand and India, but mostly India. Here's the story:

Yesterday I confirmed again with the place I will be working in New Zealand that we are still good for my start date in mid-December. After that I went to apply for my working holiday visa for New Zealand. All was well with the application until it asked if I had spent 3 months traveling/living in any of the NON low-tuberculosis countries, as deemed by New Zealand, in the last 5 years. Both Spain and Mexico are not low-tuberculosis countries so I had to answer yes due to vacation and my study abroad. At the end of the application it said I had to get  chest x-ray by a pre-approved doctor and mail the results to New Zealand before my visa application can be processed. I spent a few hours yesterday on the phone with my health insurance company, doctor's office in MPLS, as well as multiple clinics in GA trying to find an appointment time soon in which to get this done. After speaking with multiple people at the NE Georgia Medical Center, most of whom were very unhelpful, I finally gave up trying to get an appointment in Georgia and have resigned to waiting until I am back in Mpls on October 31 to take care of this. I will then mail the results right away to New Zealand and hope they process the application quickly so I can buy my plane ticket from Sydney to Auckland before it's too late and they're super expensive.

In the middle of this whole debacle I also decided it might be a good idea to look into what the process is for the visa to India. Word of warning for anyone traveling to India: they make the process so difficult you'd think they didn't want anyone to visit their county, ever. For even a tourist visa to India you have to mail in your application (or go in person) to one of 6 offices in the US. With your application you also have to send you Passport, which neither New Zealand of Australia require, along with proof of residence. This would be easy enough for most people but I haven't changed my drivers license since my most recent move and the only other things that count, a lease of utility bills, I don't have in my name. Being that I'm in Georgia right now I don't have the luxury of going into the DMV and getting my license reissued at my new address in time to drive my application to Chicago and wait for them to mail it back in time for me to get on a plane to Australia on November 17th. After first thinking I'd have to pack up and head home early to get a new license and follow the above scenario along with prayer, I decided, hey, I could just sign a lease to live at my parent's house. Dishonest I know, but I really didn't see any other way around this issue. With this, I will be driving through Chicago on my way home and could stop and drop off my application there in time (fingers crossed) for them to get it back to me before Nov. 17th. Well, this idea worked for a few hours until I couldn't sleep any longer. I woke up at 1:30 and was super stressed out about this whole issue and couldn't sleep. I started googling things visa for india on my phone and finally came up with two other solutions:

1. India just approves visas upon arrival for 40 additional countries, including the US, and this may be in effect before I arrive there.
2. The embassy in New Zealand will process visa applications for citizens of any country that are within the borders of their country. This is perfect since I will be in New Zealand for 2.5 months and will have plenty of time in which I can send away my passport and wait for it's return.

I am likely going to proceed with option 2, as I don't have any time table on option 1, and I was finally able to get back to sleep at about 4:30.

Side note to all this: the 6 month visa is valid for 6 months from the day which it was issued. If I got it while still in the US it wouldn't even be valid long enough for me may March/April/May time frame I plan to be in India.

In other news, I went to Chick-fil-A last night for the first time ever. The food was AMAZING - at least for a fast food restaurant! I had the spicy chicken sandwich with lettuce and tomatoes, no pickles. Darn good. I saw on line that a couple Chick-fil-As opened in MN today. If you haven't tried it, I would! Until today I only knew about the one at the airport but I may have to make my way to another one soon. I'd kinda compare it to Culver's, not in food offerings as I don't remember Culver's being big on Fried Chicken, but the quality is comparable - good fast food.

As far as happenings for today go, this morning we had to build a big bonfire to burn a pile of wood. Amanda and I did a surprisingly good job. We got the fire hot enough and big enough that were we able to burn a few hundred pounds of somewhat damp wood in just 3 hours. And the fire was BLAZING! It was so hot it was hard to even get close enough to throw more wood on the fire. After lunch I started painting the shed we've spent the last three days scraping. I've got a bit of that done, probably will finish tomorrow.

On Saturday morning Kim, the wife, is going to do a healing ceremony on me. She has a degree from Delphi, a spiritual and healing school, and offered to do energy readings and/or healings on us if we'd like. I took her up on the offer because I can't see any harm coming from the process and hopefully some good insights.

Sunday/Monday we are going to be spending at the family's cabin in North Carolina, just about 2 hours from hear near Highland. I'm not sure where this is or what the significance is but they've said it's just beautiful. We'll be going on hikes and relaxing for a few days in the mountains which sounds great to me.

Okay, that's all for right now. I'll try to check back in again tomorrow or Saturday before we head up to the mountains.

Hope all is well back in MN!

Best!