Sorry about that. Break just ended and labs are closing earlier than usual. Anyway, nothing big happnened for the rest of the night. We went to bed around 8 and got up at 5:45 am. The breakfast wasn't too bad. I had a biscuit, some fruit, and yogurt. Dad had all kinds of eggy junk and sausage, which is way too heavy for me in the morning. I wasn't sure what was going to happen at the consulate, so I wore a dress-suit thing. We had to go to the airport to hop on a monorail to get to Amtrak where we found out that we had to take a different company, NJ transit. All in all, it's the same thing. We got a great view of the area near the tracks. It looked like something out of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. But at least rent would be cheap. If I can find good ear plugs and an alarm clock that'll zap me awake, I could live by the train tracks. So, we got off at Penn Station and confusingly went out to stalk down the nearest post office for the special envelope to sent the visa home. The directions the hotel gave us were wrong, so we stopped in what looked like a private men's club's doorway and asked for a location. We got there finally, but there was a long line and only one table open. There were lots of people in the background drinking coffee, but only one person visibly working. This is why I want a federal job. A rather large woman behind us started to yell at the workers while they casually ignored her and continued to drink coffee, and by the time we got to the table and Dad calmed down enough to realize that all we needed was a regular Express envelope, we had spent an hour in there. We then proceeded to walk 20 or so blocks to 58th street. We wanted to look around the city, but I was wearing dressy shoes and they dug blisters into my heels. So I bled for this cause. Anyway, the Spanish consulate was located on the 30th floor of a building owned by a real estate company which is kind of funny because a lot of Spanish people complain about finding places to live. The office was small with a few bilingual workers processing papers. We waited around a bunch of people applying for student visas as well for about 45 minutes and then my number was called. We simply handed the papers to some peon-looking guy who sorted them, stamped a few things, and gave us directions on what to do with them upon entering the country. I felt really cheated. I guesss I had this vision of an embassy in mind, so silly me. But at least we had completed the task. We took a taxi back to the train station, bought some sandwiches, and drove home. I slept again until we were around Berwick. All of the preparation and tension has now piddled into the great smoothie of memory, and it has a tropical-swirl flavor.
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