JoelNothman.com

I was beginning to pack for a Hillel trip to Boston which would be leaving this Friday morning at 5:30am when I realised that I needed my passport. So I took out my passport folder and added it to the packing pile, before opening it to realise that there wasn’t actually a passport inside it!

So while I had nearly forgotten to pack my passport, what I had really forgotten was that I didn’t have it at all: I had sent it to the Canadian Embassy in NYC a couple of weeks ago with my Study Permit application (I didn’t need one for a single semester here, but I did for two).

As a result, I proceeded to spend a while stressing, talking to Naomi who looked for embassy and border phone numbers, but because I was only packing at the last minute as I tend to do, most hotlines weren’t open late enough. I called one that was, for Canadian citizens in emergencies abroad, and thankfully they didn’t throw me off the line for (1) not being Canadian (2) not being abroad (3) having a loose definition of emergency. But most of what they told me involved recommending against trying to cross the border without my passport/visa… I had thought it might be more stressful than worthwhile anyway.

It’s not quite in my mentality yet that I need a passport to get to somewhere that I can reach by a 6 hour bus ride. You simply can’t do that in Australia. Anywhere in Australia. So it completely slipped my mind.

Well Boston’s off the books then. It had sounded like a nice trip (and great value: CA$100 with travel and entertainment included), with a great bunch of people.

So while I considered paying my $100 elsewhere for a ride to Toronto and back (it’s our mid-semester break), a main motivation of going that way would be to see Niagara, in which case I might want to plan ahead to make sure I have a friend to come with me.

So I guess it’s another shabbat in Montreal. I don’t think it’ll be so bad. =) I think I’ve found somewhere interesting for dinner…