While I wait to talk with my sister-in-law and nephew on Skype, I thought I should tell about the adventures of the day. Mainly the morning. Because today was the first time for me to deal with renewing my visa.
I've had a visa before, but someone else obtained it for me. I even have a tourist visa for Argentina, but there's something about having to renew it every 90 days, even when the visa says it's good for travel up to 10 years, that I don't understand. Therefore, today marked my first time to figure things out on my own. Like a fish out of water, talking with birds. Because birds speak a different language, and often like to eat fish. ahem..
Thankfully, I was not alone. Jonas and I woke up at the crack of dawn to arrive at the Immigrations office and find--no line! Well, we waited five minutes only to find out we needed to go to another section of the building where once again, there was no line. Except there was no one to help us either. We were told to go to an office, but it wasn't specified which office that was. So we waited.. and decided to just knock on a door and figure it out for ourselves. We knocked on the right one on our first try, and handed over our information. He told us to wait outside.
After about 20 minutes, Jonas busted out the Truco cards. If only we had brought a maté to make the occasion even more Argentinian. In total, we waited an hour, and came in to fill out some paper work and explain what exactly it was we were doing here. "Volunteers," we told him. "We volunteer at certain institutes and hogars."
"No, we don't get paid."
"No, we are not students."
In English we flashbacked to some of our experiences at the GO Conference and we thanked God that we live in a country more open to people in our line of work. How hard that must be to deal with Immigrations if you don't have a more practical alibi.
But that wasn't all. Then we had to take a sheet of paper to get stamped at the bank where we paid the 300AP fee to extend the visa. The bank was "only 6 blocks away," but I kept thinking that it's still a silly process.
It's also a natural process; difficult for anyone in every country.
Then we returned to the same office only to be told that he needed a copy of our passports. Okay, we'll go across the street to the kiosk. We return. "No, no," he says. "I need your picture AND your stamped page of when you entered the country." Back and forth. By this time we just laughed about the process.
"Wait outside."
Thirty more minutes later and we were free to go. I rejoiced to see that I have exactly until my birthday to leave the country. haha.
But the kicker was even better. We walked outside to find ourselves in the middle of a protest for employees. They were shooting off fireworks and singing as if in a futbol stadium. This is Argentina. Chau.
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