At 8:00 am sharp, my phone rang. It was someone from the U.S. Embassy in Minsk. It seems as though our "conference call" with the State Department had worked some magic during the night! This time they had changed their tune, they "could" send a car for me and my luggage, but the downside was I had to be ready to go at 4:00 pm the next day! At this point I was in no position to complain, so I accepted the offer.
Now the real fun began.
I had broken the bad news to my beloved supervisor, Ludmila, the night before. So she knew there was no way I could teach my classes. But in their place came a wave of paperwork from the university. Cbeta helped me as I limped from office to office filling out forms, explaining why I was “resigning my position,” checking to see if all my library books were turned in, and a bunch of other administrative stuff. Throughout all of this, I felt really self-conscious. After all the trouble everyone had gone through back in September to officially “hire me,” this was how I had to say good-bye? I wondered what everyone was thinking, did they believe me? What did they really think about the current situation that was brewing between our two nations?
A few of my fellow English teachers shared some tears, or a hug, but for the most part there was not much to say. What was done, was done, and there was nothing any of us could do to change things. Fortunately, there wasn’t much time for sadness. The clock was ticking . . . it was almost lunch time . . . and I hadn’t packed a thing!
