Job offered, Tickets cancelled

We cancelled our tickets but for a good reason:  I have a job offer in Vietnam.  We changed the tickets to November 18th and will be picked up at the airport and taken to our complimentary room.  Now comes the process of documentation.  Here is the process.  I have to obtain a criminal background check, make copies of that and my degree, have them notarized, then take the copies to the California secretary of state office to verify that the copy is a copy of an original document.  After that , I drive to San Francisco and present the copies (not the originals) to the Vietnamese consulate.  Ironicly, at no place in this process does anyone ever check to see if the originals are actually valid.

This process is named appostilling. This was not the process used in China because China is one of the countries included in the agreement which means that original documents are accepted at face value.   Judging by the time estimates given by each agency,  this should be approximately a 2 month process.  Of course, we are not willing to wait until the new year to travel and find we can pay an agency about $500 to do this in a few days, so we send an email to the school to ask their advise and they inform us that Vietnam will let us in with a promise to present the documents later.