Sometimes It’s Good to Wait
Leahe and I had just yesterday decided that we weren’t going to wait any longer for our Meditation Visas to come through, that since Tempel said the monastery would find a way to make it possible for us to stay there with only a Tourist Visa….and since one of our Canadian travelers had recently learned that their Embassy was now taking a week longer than expected to get a Tourist Visa approved…we wouldn’t wait until the 18th, as the Embassy had suggested, but we’d go ahead and cancel our application for Mediation Visas and make new applications for a Tourist Visa right away.
But before we ran off to the Fed-Ex office, we agreed that we’d wait until the following morning (this morning), and call the Embassy one more time just to make sure that the Meditation Visas hadn’t somehow already, miraculously been approved.
And guess what? They HAD!!!
Apparently the Myanmar Ministry of Religious Affairs had just approved both our visa applications, and the Embassy was at that moment in the process of sending us back our passports — with our Meditation Visas in place! They should be in our hands early next week!
So we will, at last, have official approval to stay at the monastery.
Whew.
(image: Young Woman Before an Aquarium, by Henri Matisse)