In Which I am Nearly Deported.

Suspect self to not be a particularly talented traveler.

Went to Uruguay yesterday, and this supposedly simple trip was greatly complicated by my travel savvy deficiency.

The difficulty began the night before, when nearly froze to death when slumbering.  Yet instead of simply awakening and gathering warming materials like a sane person, I evidently opted to attempt to curl myself into some sort of warmth seeking lump of miserable.  Awoke to find entire self folded neatly (along with my blankie, of course) on my pillow.

I do not have a very large pillow.

This bit of nighttime aerobics gave me a limp all day, remarkably reminiscent of a ninety-year-old woman.  Or a one-and-a-half legged pirate.

At least no dignity was lost.

Despite this minor setback and a subway failure (after which I became solely responsible for the vertical maintenance of a sleeping woman), we arrived to the boat on schedule.

At which point tragedy struck.

Due to my new passport in which I bear startling resemblance to a member of the Elfin Nation, I had a myriad of Fairly Important Papers.

Presented them all to the scary looking man with my best and most hopeful smile.  He snatched them from my friendly grip with a grunt and began rifling sacrilegiously through them.  Keeping my hopeful-slowly-turning-concerned smile plastered on my face, I watched as he picked up my passport and walked away.

This was rather unexpected.

Abandoned, I remained at my post in front of the window.

Waited.

Preformed a foot shuffle.

Face began to twitch from the unexpected burden of maintaining my Most Presentable Face for so long.

It was at some point after I had begun to hum along to the soothing elevator music drifting softly throughout the building that he returned to twitching, shuffling, ever-smiling me.

Not bothering to restation himself in his proper place, he marched directly up to me (this would have been far more frightening had he been taller than four foot seven).

“Why are you here?” he asked brusquely.

Delighted to know the answer, I joyously announced, “Studying!”

This is where things got a bit strange.

“ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT!” he shouted at me.

“Ahhh…  Pardon?” I responded wittily.

“Illegal immigrant!!” he spat.  “You can’t just come here.  You need a visa.  A VISA!”

And with a snarl he stalked off.

Hmm.  Now, I may not be the most experienced traveler, but at this point, I deducted that this was not typical.

He returned with another growl, just for me, and an unfathomably complicated piece of paper.  He stamped by passport furiously, scrawled a note under the stamp, and threw my things back at me.

Relieved and rejoicing, I collected my items and scampered onto the vessel to commence the voyage.

The shock came when I opened my passport.  Under the exit stamp from Argentina was a message: until July 7^th.

I would be unable to re-enter Argentina.

I had been… deported?!?

This was fairly disheartening.

Frantic, I flipped to my new Fairly Important Paper and scanned it desperately for clues.

This paper was not in Spanish.

Well, it was. 

But the only words I recognized were “Virginia”, “judicial”, and “July.”

These were not soothing words.

Fortunately, I did not seem to possess enough sanity to stay panicked for long, so I fell asleep.

Upon arrival to Uruguay, I had the paper examined by a waitress.  (Officials scare me, especially after one had just ejected me from the country.)  She said lots of words to me that I did not understand, but from what I gathered I had not, in fact, been deported.

The people who allowed me back into Argentina seemed to agree with her, but they, too, said lots of words to me that I did not understand.

Then they asked if I understood, and I said yes.

This is a reflex, as to not appear stupid.  Instead, I will now walk around thrusting a random piece of paper at passerby to avoid deportation.

Good plan, Virginia.