Batch 4: Freewrite - Russia and working with international clientel

Recently, Dr. Cialdini was asked to speak to 3,000 students at the Synergy Business School in Moscow. Though international travel is common for him, this is the first international client I have been able to observe from start to finish. Lucky for me, Everything that could go wrong did so I was able to learn how to overcome problems on a deadline.
The number one problem we encountered was the language barrier. The woman organizing the event did not speak great English, and our office collectively speaks no Russian. Many of the back and forth emails were difficult to understand, and we had to clarify crucial information several times. Recently, I got a call from the organizer's assistant who attempted to speak to me in Russian, got frustrated when I did not understand, and hung up on me. When the organizer herself called back a few minutes later, she very loudly, asked for my manager. When I told her she was on the phone, and asked for a call back number, she said "Yes!" and hung up the phone.

No, this is not Dr. Cialdini's passport. 

Our second major hurtle was trying to get a Visa. To travel to Russia on Business, one must have a formal letter of invitation from the hiring Russian company and you can't apply until 25 days before your tip, AND you have to send in your passport for processing. In our case, Dr. Cialdini was traveling in the Netherlands until 15 days before he needed to travel to Russia, so we could not start the process on his Visa until he returned with his passport. Once we were able to start the request process, we discovered that our formal letter of invitation from Synergy Business School had been denied by the visa office. Luckily, we made a contact at the office who pushed it through.
Our last hurtle is the wait- that we are still in. The Russian embassy said they would send the passport and visa documentation back on the 16th, to be received on the 19th for his flight on the 21st. At this point we have done all we can and just hope that nothing goes wrong: The documents will arrive in time, they are correct, and Dr. Cialdini will not get stuck at customs for too long.