Mini nightmares continue for both my husband and me. The document we urgently needed from my sister is still being held up, because she put jewelry in with it. I had to ask her to write a statement of declaration of purpose for the jewelry to be sent to the Czech customs. Hopefully that will finally get the sucker sent to us. I will emphasize that any future gifts she buys for me should either be given to me in person when I visit the US, or bought online through a company based in an EU country (that excludes the UK, obviously, thanks to Brexit). At this point, I'm so frustrated about the delay of the documents that I wish they could just throw the jewelry in the trash and send the rest. That's obviously not possible.

In a few minutes we have to go back to the ministry of interior, in person, to try to fix the snafu relating to the Czechification of my name. I might have mentioned that when I applied for various things through the government, they insisted my name be exactly as it is in my passport, which makes sense. But then some swift clerical person in Prague ignored my exact name, giving me my childhood middle name (when I use my maiden name as a middle name), and adding "ova" to my married name. That just doesn't wash. That's like renaming a woman "Jane Elizabeth Novakova" when your passport shows "Jane Jones Novak". Anyway, huge hassles, but it will eventually be fixed. I'm not exactly going to travel to the US to totally change my name, social security card, and passport for the error of some shmuck.