Catching The Early Train To Stay Out Of Hungarian Prison

I learned something new today.  Occasionally, you fill out tons of paperwork, talk to doctors, mail signed letters across the planet, go to the wrong city hall, and still manage to be in a country illegally.  That's right, I'm "technically" working here illegally.  Until tomorrow.

Yesterday, I filled you in on all the crazy events surrounding my residence permit.  All the confusion of different people having different forms was resulting in the process taking forever.  Apparently it took too long.

We finally got everything together, and I was ready to go to Szeged (the closest big town) to turn it all in.  Klára, the lady at my school who helps me with all my problems, had been working overtime on this one.  It's been driving her nuts and she finally saw light at the end of the tunnel.  She called the Szeged office to see when I could come in, but they didn't tell her what she wanted to hear.

It went something like this (in Hungarian, of course):  "He was supposed to come in with all of his paperwork sooner.  It's too late now and he's technically working here illegally.  Tell him to get on the internet and make an appointment to start the whole process over."

She handled it better than I would've - her head didn't even explode!  After a long conversation explaining why it was late and who's fault it was (I'm still not sure who's it was, but it wasn't us.  Was it?).  Once the lady understood how hard Klára had worked, and realized other people had been preventing us from getting the paperwork, she changed her tune.

The lady scheduled me an appointment first thing tomorrow morning, and she's going to ignore the fact that it's late!  It's all coming together.  I have all the paperwork, finally, and I just need to bring it to her.

First thing in the morning, I said, and I wasn't kidding.  My appointment's at 8:30 A.M.  That means I'll take the 5:45 train.  Suddenly, I miss only having to be at a 7:45 class.  It doesn't help that I'm the world's worst morning person.

Now it's time for a few hours of sleep.  I'll probably need it for tomorrow.  On the plus side, Szeged's very close to the Serbian border.  If they change their mind about the legal issue, I can always run.  I'll just have to change the name of my blog to "Serbia is Alex's Classroom".

I hope that doesn't happen - it doesn't have the same ring to it.

Hungarian phrase of the day (very appropriate since I'm about to say it):  Jó éjszakát (pronounced Yo Ahy-so-kaht), it means "Good Night".