i can't leave

this morning i about had a heart attack and fell out of my chair. ok, the heart attack is an exaggeration, but i really did almost fall out of my chair. and not because i'm clumsy. i went to the northwest airlines website to look up my flight itinerary for flying back to the US so i could tell michele when i'd be arriving for my 6-hour layover in portland. according to northwest, i had no flight reservations. that is when i almost fell out of my chair. i looked at that reservation maybe a month ago and changed my seat so tim and i would be sitting next to each other! what happened to it?? then i went to a website for the thai travel agency that the school used to purchase my ticket and tried to find my reservation there because that was supposed to work, too. that site also said i had no reservation. that's when i about had a heart attack.

so i went down to the office, walked in and said, "i have two problems." (i didn't tell you about the second problem yet.) having a problem is pretty much the only reason i visit the office, so i don't know why i announced it but i did. so i told them my flight problem and khun sujin said, "but you have a reservation." well, but, they don't think i do. that is my problem. but she got right on the phone and made some calls and told me they are working on. ok, on to my second problem. last week i asked to get my last payment early, on tuesday (yesterday), so i could go with someone to the thai bank and transfer money to an american account and not have to deal with cash. "oh, but everyone got paid yesterday." but not me. so sujin calls over to accounting people. apparently i'm not getting paid until next week because officially my last day is october 1. does that make any sense??? no. plus, i won't physically be here and always before they've had me sign something saying i received the money. apparently nothing here can be easy or logical for me. but maybe they'll arrange for me to be paid before i leave on friday so i can sign the thing. i hope so, i don't particularly want to leave without getting my last payment.

then someone called sujin and one of the other ladies in the office offered me some tea and cookies. i needed them because i wanted to cry, i didn't have a plane ticket home and they didn't pay me! so we had some snacks and somehow sujin did some magic and my plane ticket got fixed. my reservation was deleted or something? it didn't really make sense, but it was fixed so i didn't complain. but i still want my money.

it was not a good start to the day. and i had to go to the immigration office to extend my visa so i'm legally here after next tuesday, so i was just hoping nothing else went wrong today. the immigration office was totally packed. we sat there for maybe an hour and they had called half of the people in line in front of me (you get a ticket with a number and it also tells you how many people are ahead of you in line). nathan and lisa needed to go to the vietnamese embassy by 4 and were waiting for me. so then p-ahm (lady at school who deals with all the legal stuff for the foreign teachers) just went up to one of the worker ladies and said something, came back and got my papers and crumpled up my ticket, and we were out of there in about 15 minutes. it was pretty sweet. well, there was a moment of worry when she brought back my passport and the lady had stamped it so that i could stay until september 9. i said, "oh no, not september! october!" and p-ahm made a funny face of shock and went back and the lady changed it.

i was much more relaxed after that all worked out. but i still want my money.