Waiting on a Wire: Paying tuition

Last week we finally sent off our Student Visa application to New Zealand Immigration. It was a (s)nail biter! We had to wire our tuition to Taruna, then receive our Offer of Place documents from the college before we could submit our Visa applications to the NZ Consulate in Los Angeles. It took over 2 weeks for our money to travel the 4394 miles from Hawaii to New Zealand! That’s an average speed of 293 miles per day or about 12 miles per hour.

            Math question! If your life savings travels for 15 days at 12 miles per hour how long does it take to get stressed?

            As my dad says, “Well, you figured out how to do it… too bad you won’t ever be able to use what you learned again.” If you or anyone you know is attempting to get a Visa, here is what we learned:

1.     Do not try to get things done around Christmas. Everyone is on vacation, and when they return they have a stack of work waiting for them.

2.     Turns out that you are usually positioned on the bottom of that stack.

3.     The New Zealand Consulate is awesome, and we hope they are reading this so that they put our application on the top of the stack!