For six months, almost to the day, I was at Clemson University, while she was in Paris working as an intern for a Chinese-Italian artist. Every day, without fail, we spoke to each other. At midnight in Clemson, I would wake her up (six AM in Paris) and we would talk anywhere from two to four hours as she ate breakfast and got ready for work. We used Skype or MSN (God bless the internet). I usually went to bed at about four or five in the morning.

When I woke up, around 11 or 12 (I had late classes), I would speak to her as she was getting home from work and as I was eating breakfast. Many days, when I got home from classes, we would talk for a little while as well.

The six months had huge ups and downs. First, a Taiwanese friend of hers in Baltimore bought her a plane ticket to New York. I organized a place for us to stay and what-not. Then, after the ticket was bought, the US embassy in Paris said they couldn’t give her a visa.

That’s the curse of being from a contentious “country.” Though Taiwan, in most respects, is treated like a sovereign country, it is considered by the international community as a part of China. China and Taiwan for decades have been at odds over Taiwan’s independence, and on a regular basis China threatens to attack Taiwan. For this and other reasons, Taiwanese and Chinese people have to have visas anywhere they go, by and large.

Needless to say, Fanfan couldn’t come.

Then, a little while later, her boss in Paris, the jet-set only child of a Chinese business man in Italy, decided she wanted to spend a couple of months in New York working in SoHo. Fanfan decided to advance a trip home to Taiwan that she was already planning on taking a couple months later because she hadn’t seen her family in over a year. In Taiwan, she got her visa, and we were convinced that the time had come. Her boss was going to rent an apartment in SoHo that would have a room for Fanfan as well, so I was going to hop up to NY to stay with her for a while. I had never been there.

Weeks past, Fanfan’s boss kept pushing back the trip from February to March, to April, then it just sort of faded away. We were both hanging on to that idea of being together on the basis that when people say they’re going somewhere, they plan it out and they go. Needless to say, neither one of us is the only child of a wealthy business man, so we didn’t understand the concept of hopping from Paris, to Morrocco for the weekend, then to LA for two weeks, then to Venice for a birthday party.

She never came to NY.

By then, I was already planning my return to Paris. I was writing letters, translating my whole life into French, etc. I finally got excepted to the University from which I am writing right now.

But, even there, there were a hundred snags that tripped me up on the way here, the largest of which being the French Consulate in Atlanta. For anyone who has never gone to live abroad, and has thus never been to a consulate, you don’t know that all countries employ only the most soulless of people to work in consulate visa departments. I’ve watched numerous times, as consulate officials rip dreams apart with a straight face as they change the number on the screen and yell, “Next.” The poor person, trying to go home and see their family or, say, trying to get back to a girl with home they are in love is left standing, blank-faced, trying to figure out what just happened.

I’m not exaggerating. If there is a hell and Satan has any wits, he will take a hint from the visa waiting rooms in consulates around the world.

When I went to the consulate in June, it was the second time I had been there. When I studied in Angers, France, I had to get a visa, so I had to make that five hour drive to the consulate. I got my visa, after being told by Sen. Hollings office that it was too late and there was no hope. They gave it too me that day. This time, I went, full dossier, a month before I was planning to depart, with everything they could possibly as of me. I spent the night with the friend of a friend and I woke up at six in the morning to drive to the consulate.

I waited for two hours in the lobby, talking to an Indian man who was there with his two boys trying to go back to India to visit his family. He had to get a French visa just to change planes in France! We both vented about how horrible consulates are, and he assured me that the American consulates are worse, which I can imagine considering the huge number of people trying to come to the US.

There were three girls who were leaving in two weeks to study for a month in Aix. The were in front of me in line (not really, we were made to come down to the lobby because we arrived to early, when we came down, the girls went up, so they were in front of us). I heard Nina (I think that was her name) say to the first girl that the normal waiting period for a visa now is two to four weeks.

“But, we’re leaving in two weeks,” the girl said.

Nina just sighed and repeated herself. I don’t know if the girls ever got their visa, but I know what happened to me. I got up and presented all of my information.

First of all, the pictures I had weren’t acceptable. So I had to run down to the post office and get them redone. The lady at the post office said, “Before I accept your money, I have to tell you that the consulate turns down on a regular basis the pictures we take. Are you sure you wanna do this?” I told her I had no other choice.

When I got back, Nina reopened my folder. Everything that I had neatly organized, she tore apart, stacking things in different piles, then she asked me “Where’s this?” “Where’s that?” I wanted to say it was with all the other stuff she tore apart, but I just politely said, “It’s right there under those papers.”

She pulled up my university acceptance letter. “We need a more official letter,” said ole’ Nina.

“I’m sorry, but that letter says I’ve been accepted. It’s signed and stamped by the president of the university.”

“We need it on more official letterhead.”

“That’s all that they gave me, ma’am,” I said, “It even says on the letter ‘this is what you’re supposed to take to the consulate in order to get your visa.’”

“I need you to contact the university and ask them to fax us a more official letter. We’ll keep all your information here until you do that.”

I gave her a US Post, overnight envelope to send me my passport in Charleston (big mistake, no tracking number). When I got home, I emailed the university and asked them if they could give me another letter. They said they didn’t understand the problem because the letter they sent me is what they send to all international students and there’s never been a problem. I forwarded that email to the consulate.

Here’s the other problem with consulates (at least the French one), they don’t ever acknowledge contact. I emailed them at least twenty times, asking if they had received the email I forwarded. I called, but nobody ever answers. Once someone answered, I said to him in French, “I’d just like to know if you received the information I sent.” Hearing my accent, he asked, “Is it for a visa?”

“Oui.”

The line went dead. He had transferred me to the visa department where nobody answered. I called back, he never answered again.

Then, I called Sen. Lindsay Graham’s office. By this time, it was two weeks before I was leaving. They were right on it. The people in his office worked very hard, just for me. I was more than impressed. After a couple of days, they actually got through to someone and actually found out that Nina was still waiting on the letter from my university! They gave me a fax number. I printed the email from my university, and a letter explaining the situation. I wrote “ATTN: NINA” at the top.

I faxed it every day for four days. No response. After a couple of days, I was sending faxes and emails saying, “If you got the information, could you just send me an email with the word ‘yes,’ and if not ‘no.’ So that I can plan accordingly?”

I got no response. Sen. Graham’s office could no longer get through either.

The Sunday before the Wednesday I was to depart, I drove back up to Atlanta. I was the first person in line that morning. Nina came to the window, and I told her why I was there. She typed my information in the computer and told me the passport had been processed.

I was elated.

However, she looked through all of the passports in the office and back in the mailroom and couldn’t find mine. My happiness quickly faded.

“It must have already been mailed,” she told me, but she didn’t know when it had been mailed.

After driving five hours to Atlanta, I had been told what I was waiting to hear in all of five minutes. Now, though, I was scared that my passport with my visa that I could use to get to France to see Fanfan after six months was lost in the mail.

I was on a back road outside of Easley, South Carolina at about noon when my mom called me.

“Your visa is here,” she said.

I felt like for the first time in months I could breathe. I couldn’t stop smiling. I was all alone, but I new that I wouldn’t be for much longer.

Fanfan called me soon after that, and I didn’t have the heart to pretend that I hadn’t gotten it, though it crossed my mind. I told her that I would see her in two days.

The worst thing about all of that, is that I had almost no time to see many of my friends. I had been so wrapped up in getting the visa, that I had had very little time to spend time with my friends and family. I was left with only that Tuesday.

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