TheSwellFellow

Reading things like that, I find it very disappointing that people here in the United States choose to not vaccinate their children.

Exactly! I always thought that was so funny, I know a girl that's kind of hippy-like, and she constantly is talking about evil conservatives not believing in climate change or whatever. But then she talks about natural medicine and the horror of GMO's and vaccines. It's all quite funny to me.

Not OP but I studied in Russia and needed a visa for that. It was an arduous and expensive process - to start, I needed my birth certificate, a number of Passport photos, something that proved that I don’t have HIV/AIDS, my passport, a matriculation letter from my university in Russia, a letter from my home university in the US, and in my specific case I sent in a name change form because I changed my name about 10 years ago and my birth certificate has my old name on it. So you send all of that in to a sketchy third party and they come back with your shiny Russian visa - although mine had a error on it! It mixed up the cities that I was born in and lived in, but it was too late in the process for me to fix it so I went to Russia hoping nobody would care enough to search up the Mixhap.

I flew in to St. Petersburg and it’s all dark and I was rerouted to talk to a soldier one on one in a room, and I was super scared. The soldier comes up, examined my passport and visa, looks at me and asks “What is the capital of your state, the state Georgia?” I responded “Atlanta.” The soldier nodded and said, “like Atlanta Hawks, yes?” I was very taken aback, because I was scared about this visa thing, but I was also relieved and of course responded “Yes! Do you like basketball?” The solider laughed and said “yes, very much. My favorite player is Dwight Howard, he plays good defense.” And then we ended up having a two minute basketball talk, speaking in a combination of Russian and English, with me explaining that I was a Charlotte Hornets fan. This dude responded “They are not very good, you should pick better team.” Turns out this guard was the biggest Dwight Howard fan on the planet, and also knew that my team was trash. I wonder how he thought when Howard was traded to the Hornets.

Anyway, my border crossing was really chill, but I could see why it would be nerve racking for some. A number of students I went with had far worse times.

cough Eminem cough

As a teenage Redditor I can confirm that John is right.