Smooth Operations: No Such Thing

Two things happened today:

1. Since the Melbourne US Consulate took care of lodging our no-fee passport applications I though we were on the fast road to getting our passports. Today I recieved an email from the Inter-America/El Salvador Country Desk sharing this piece of information: SATO Travel has informed us that they have not recieved your no-fee passport applications. What is this? Does anything we touch disappear into some sort of black hole, never to be seen again? We followed instructions exactly the way the materials advised--except for the Consulate insisting that DC advised them to lodge the applications themselves.

2. Our staging materials came today so we immediately emailed SATO Travel to make our flight reservations to staging in DC. We're staying at the Holiday Inn. Fantastic. However, we were advised that if our no-fee passport fails to materialise itself, we can forget about getting cleared to leave with our training group.

After coming this far, even after all of the hurdles we've jumped over, I'd hate for things to be ruined over a silly passport! Geez.

Think positive thoughts. Think positive thoughts.