My Little Blue Book

School got out here really early for Christmas break, so I've had travel plans lined up for months. I'm going to be spending a week in Dublin, and I'm leaving in a few days. For a while, I've known that the other gaps have other travel plans. The girl from Ecuador is planning to spend Christmas in Spain with her aunt. Just in the last few days, though, I've found out that she has to have a visa to go there, and they keep asking her for more details and documents, so she still doesn't know when she'll get to leave. In a panic, I sent a message to the girl that was in my job last year. "Do I need a visa? I thought you could go to other countries for short vacations without having a visa. " And then I found out that was my American privilege talking. Because I have a nice navy blue, American passport, I can land in most European countries, tell the immigration officer that I'm there on vacation and be sent on my way. Meanwhile my friend has been trudging through paperwork for over a week. As is often the case in situations of racial/ethnic/gender inequality, I initially felt guilty. Guilty that I can hop on a plane to Dublin without a second thought, when she can't even have a layover in some countries without a visa, even if she doesn't leave the airport. For her to travel to most countries outside South America she either needs a visa along with any additional paperwork the country may require, or has to pay a large amount of money to go as part of a tour group. As I thought about it, I wondered if this is strictly a matter of my American privilege, or if any of it has to do with how relationships between two countries are. For instance, if I wanted to go to Russia, would I have a similar experience, or does my American passport come with fairly universal ease of travel? Since I never traveled outside the United States before I came here, I really don't have the experience or knowledge to answer that question. For now, I'm just praying that my friend can get everything to work out because no one deserves to be alone for the holidays.