Next Stop LA

At the Vancouver airport when filling out our customs forms, I suddenly realised there was an item missing from my handbag. Reasonably vital, as reasonably expensive. Thankfully when I called it, somebody answered and the dude was able to tell me that I'd left it on the bus. I must've been holding my phone and then let it fall to the floor as I got off the bus. Not so good. But at least it wasn't stolen. Just a little more hassle than we needed 5 minutes before we were about to board. The dude was coming back to the airport, so I tried my best to get out of customs and pick it up from him, but I was at the point of no return. The story ends well. It was couriered to the Lewis' apartment.

Also the pickup from LA was interesting because Susanna Lewis was available, and we had told Kristen LoBello that we could catch a bus to somewhere that was closer to her school for her to pick us up after school hours.... but they were talking to each other and getting in touch with us, and that didn't quite happen. and then at the other end, we couldn't get in touch with them as they were both at school. So we soaked up the environment at the airport for a bit before we finally got through and Susanna could pick us up!!

Then the next saga began!!! No disclaimers. I'll begin now in saying that I'm not good at reading the fineprint, and tend to wing things more than I should!!
We arrived at the Lewis' apartment in LA and worked on a plan for the 2 working days we were in LA. We really wanted to see the Heritage Christadelphian School and the other day we needed to set aside for heading into the Indian Embassy for a same day visa.
Getting on the net that night to check on the address for the Embassy it was in fact in California yes. But unfortunately San Fransisco was the address, and not Los Angeles. The two cities being 7 hours apart or more depending if you catch bus, train, or car!!!

So the next day we headed off to the school quite nice and early as it was about an hour away and the traffic isn't the quietest in LA as you can imagine.
Arrived in time for morning assembly, and loved it. It was so cool seeing another school at the starting stage. They were in their 3rd year, but everything was still being set up, and they had 24 pupils which was really cool. I got to help out with a spelling test, and loved it. Think I could probably stay there as well and volunteer. During the morning we tried to get in touch with the Indian Embassy, but then worked out from more thorough reading on the web...(there is a trick, more thorough reading needed from the beginning!!!) but they weren't answering their phones, only between 2pm & 4pm, so settled back into semi crazed state and Ruth Laben suggested that we could go with her to San Fransisco the same afternoon if we needed to.
Then it was calling and calling and calling, but of course, why would the Indian Embassy pickup their phone's? It certainly wasn't a good 'winging it' day for me. between 3 & 4 we had to decide whether or not it would be a fruitful journey to San Fran if we couldn't do a same day visa stop, and still couldn't get through by phone... so we decided to leave it. Would've been a fun, adrenaline pumping experience, but we had no way of telling if it would've been in vain or no. We had found a sentence on the internet saying that the same day visa's were for US citizens only. I think that sentence held some sway for me as well as the fact that we found out there was an embassy in Thailand.

Getting back to the apartment that night we did some more searching and found some relatively cheap flights to the embassy in Thailand, 10hours travelling time by land from where we were flying into. So we headed out to Santa Monica and enjoyed the lights and sights:-)

Next day we booked the flights and then Jono and Melinda called us to tell us that there was an Indian Embassy (which we hadn't found listed on the Indian Embassy site on the internet) in Bangkok. Handy information really. Story to be continued!!!