The Chicago Trip Part 1

On Monday, November 9, I got a call from my mom just as I was heading out to drop off some stuff for dry cleaning and go to the mall to pick up some last minute items. She told me that she was going out and therefore if my certificate of eligibility came that I would have to be home to sign for it. In a panic,  my best friend Gordon and I turned around in the car and rushed home as missing the package could greatly delay me getting my papers in time.

(BTW, a certificate of eligibility is just a piece of paper from Japanese government officials saying that you can legally enter the country for a certain period of time indicated and what you will primarily doing while you are in Japan.)

Well, as soon as we pulled up, the FedEx guy pulled up with an envelope i  his hand. The ironic thing is that it didn’t even require a signature even though the school said it would. But whatever. I now had my golden ticket to going to Japan as a pre-college student. I ripped open the envelope yet carefully avoided ripping up the documents to uncover my certificate in all of it’s glory.

The school even sent a brochure outlining some of the features of the school. Overall, I was quite pleased.
Now came the option of mailing the certificate of eligibility to Chicago and having them mail it back along with my shiny new visa OR I could drive about 5 hours to downtown Chicago and show up with the documents, turn them in, and get my visa the very next day. So, as you can guess from the title of the post that I drove to Chicago. Er, well Gordon did and I paid for gas.

Yup, it was about 5 pm but I was so determined to get the visa and terrified of it getting lost in the mail or not showing up on time that I asked my friend Gordon if he would like to do a road trip to Chicago to get the visa. He was actually excited and agreed to it.

So no longer than an hour later, we were on the road with the new car navigator he just bought to guide us along the way.

Part 2 soon of the actual stay in Chicago and the major mistake on my part.