The arrival of the tickets

Today Sameer when to Student Flights / Flight Center to fetch our tickets and buy our travel insurance. Then he swung by on the way back to campus to bring me lunch and show me the tickets. They were in one of those little leather folders that the travel agencies give you, all stapled together, and there were two baggage labels attached. My heart was all aflutter. :)

Twenty minutes later, he sent me an email to say thatBA had sent us our etickets for the Chicago flights.

I think it's such a strange coincidence that we got the papers for both our UK and US visas on the same day and then we got the confirmation of both our UK and US flights on the same day. I'm taking it as a good sign.

Pictures of us

Just thought I'd post some pictures, so you know who we are! (Also, I wanted a profile picture but didn't want to add any pictures to a photo host thingy.)

Tick tock, tick tock!

Things are moving along swiftly now! This morning, Sameer called the British Home Office and they confirmed that our HSMP had been approved! We now need to get FedEx to fetch all the documentation and bring it down to us. We don't want another mix-up like the last time. Hopefully, Sameer's degrees and certificates haven't been lost and are still at the Home Office. We're really not too clear on what went on there. At any rate, we still need to get our entry permits.

Also, the Chicago GSB sent us the documents that we need to apply for our US student-and-spouse visas. (The J1? Or is it F1?) He received those today as well and now we just need to download and fill in the relevant forms, get a PIN number from Pick 'n Pay, call the US embassy, and book a visa interview. Fingers crossed!

Oh, and just now, Sameer finally managed to get by BA's restriction on South African credit cards and has booked our tickets to Chicago.

I didn't post about the United Airlines fiasco did I? Well, basically United Airlines pulled all the flights for the day that we'd provisionally booked for and Flight Center said there wasn't anything they could do about it. So basically, we had to book our own flights online because the alternatives offered by the travel agency were so ridiculously expensive! And we decided to go through BA but then there was a problem with the online booking. Apparently the Reserve Bank or whatever doesn't allow you to book flights online if they don't originate in South Africa! We had to call the local BA offices and get them to book it for us, and then arrange to pay them directly. Only we did have to pay an additional fee but it wasn't much so, we went ahead with it.

Anyway, hopefully that's all sorted out.

The Adventure Begins

Today Sameer and I went to Student Flights to book our main airline tickets - Cape Town to London, London Chicago, return, and return again! Now that we've had to set dates, it seems like things are finally happening.

Oh, and not counting shut-down, I now have only 68 days left at Laragh. Woo-hoo!