Visas and burgundy passports (or, visas in burgundy passports)

For everyone who doesn't know what's going on (a group that may include my parents, as they never seem to know what I'm up to, whether I tell them or not), I am taking off for Peru in two days (Sunday, 21 Feb), for three weeks of tropical medicine research.

The DoD (Department of Defense, for the less acronym-inclined) has several domestic and overseas laboratories--one owned by the Air Force, a few by the Navy, and most by the Army--which collectively make up GEIS, or Global Emerging Infection Surveillance. The overarching command, if one could even use that word, is in the DC area, which meant that I got to rub some high-ranking elbows, impressive them with my CV and career goals, and convince them that it's in their best interests to pay for me to go to one of these labs. Peru was chosen because three weeks is a bit short for a research rotation, and since it's in the same time zone as DC, I won't be losing any time to jetlag.

This whole process, of convincing people to let me go and to pay for me to go (two different groups--one to let me go, one to pay for it), started in August, and I got final authorization (ironically, from the 'let me go' group; the 'pay for it' group had already given the thumbs up) much later than that, after months of stubbornly not letting them say no.

Now that that was taken care of... Believe it or not, foreign countries aren't always glad to see active duty military personnel arrive on their soil, regardless of their reasons for being there, so all sorts of country clearance and theater clearance (theater being theater of operations, which in this case is SOUTHCOM--Southern Command) and things going through diplomatic channels and taking forever. The process to get my official (burgundy) passport started... well, I don't remember when it started, but the passport was issued on 11 Jan. Then I needed an official visa to go with the official passport, which requires a resolution signed by the president of Peru, which just came through on Wednesday (so yes, the president of Peru gave me personal permission to enter the country). So I went to the Peruvian Embassy on Wednesday for the visa, and was told that I needed a letter, on letterhead, from my command. Just showing them my orders wasn't good enough. I emailed my program director (who is not technically my commanding officer, but I prefer to leave my commanding officer out of as much as possible, because he loses things. Like leave papers.) and asked her to write the letter, which she did. So I brought all that stuff back again today and dropped it off, and was told to pick up the passport at 5.

Long story slightly less-long: after three trips onto what is technically Peruvian soil, I now have a visa in my burgundy passport.

And assuming no more freak snow storms close Reagan National Airport, come Sunday, I'll have a stamp in my burgundy passport as well.

In case you were wondering how an official passport is different than a normal passport:

This is not my actual passport, just a picture I shamelessly copied from Google. As you can see, it's not blue, it has the word 'OFFICIAL' on it (which blue passports do not), and that little electronic-chip looking thing on the bottom means that there are electronics embedded in the passport.

Anyway, assuming I don't get too lazy while I'm gone, and assuming I have adequate internet connections, stay tuned for tales from the southern hemisphere (it's barely the southern hemisphere, but it counts).