Finished With The Legal Stuff

Our visas have been approved – hooray! Actually not too tricky of a process… but a little pricey. We bought letters of recommendation from a company in Thailand (I think the company is called Sun Belt Asia), $150 apiece. I don’t think you necessarily need these letters, but supposedly it really speeds the process along… especially when you’re trying to get a long-term visa (in our case, for a year). We sent these letters plus our passports and a simple one-page visa application form along with $175 per application to the honorary Thai Consulate in Houston (Sun Belt Asia recommended this consulate). They processed our visas within a day, but we forgot to send self-addressed pre-paid envelopes for them to mail our passports back, so we have to wait a little longer until the visas are actually in our hands.

Next up on the list: storage, plane tix, and immunization shots!

…on a kind of sadder note, I found a new home for Mister Kitty. He’s been my companion for 5 or 6 years now, and I’m really sad to see him go – but it’s for the best. He’d be miserable if I tried to drag him to Asia with me. I’m happy to report that he’s doing really good in his new home!

The New Deal Fashion Show

This isn’t Thai-related, but I wanted to post it somewhere and this is the only blog I got.

I had 8 dresses I made in a handmade market/fashion show this past weekend, called the New Deal. Edge of Urge presented it as a benefit for the DREAMS Center for Arts Education, and it went really really well. It was really windy that day so I was a little worried the model’s dresses would get blown up (the fashion show was held outside in a big tent), but it turned out that a ton of people showed up… which was great for blocking the wind (and for DREAMS) but at the end of my run I had to come out and take a bow and it was terrifying. However am I going to become a rock star if I can’t get over my stage fright? Oh well.

Anyway, I’m going to be posting pictures on the New Deal website as I get them, you can check them out here: edgeofurge.com/new_deal. Until then, here’s a video of my run:
Bess Dolin: New Deal Fashion Show on Youtube

The Passports Have Arrived!

Me and Shaun’s passports have arrived in the mail! Hooray! Now we’re working on getting visas… Shaun’s been doing more research about that than me.