It takes at least four attempts to accomplish anything

I didn't realize it at the time, but Adventures with the Spanish Consulate should have taught us about dealing with perhaps more than just the Spanish government. Perhaps it takes at least four rounds to get anything done.

There was one exception today. Ysabel went to the bank with us and we successfully opened an account in one visit. Well, there was the other stop at the bank on the first day we were here...

Keys - llaves
We had one set of keys on arrival. Two keys are needed to get home - one for entry into the building, and the other to get into the apartment (piso). Yesterday we split up for a bit while Jack and Alex rushed home so Alex could go to the bathroom while Anna and I shopped for dinner. By the time we were headed home, I was in dire need of the bathroom. But we hadn't really figured the bell system yet. At the outside door the bells are marked by the floor, then either D for derecha (right apartment) or I for Izquierda (left apartment). The question is, do you determine left and right from the top of the stairs or from exiting the elevator? I was pretty sure it was the elevator, and I needed the boys to unlock the door for me QUICK. But no one answered. And no one answered when I buzzed D. I buzzed several times, and since our neighbors were not very happy to see us move in, I didn't want to bother them. Alas, I was ready to charge into the quiet bar across the street in despiration when a delivery man (THANK GOD) buzzed someone else and got in. So we slipped inside and I ran up the stairs.

Thus, we decided getting a second set of keys moved up in importance on the to-do list. We also decide to figure out how the buzzer system works. Turns out that ours is I – izquerda – because it is to the left at the top of the stairs. Score, we figured that one out. Every little victory counts!

So Jack and I headed out to get keys made. Our fabulous porter Benito sent us to the hardware store (ferretaria) around the corner. We got one key made and found that the outside key required a special key maker. (round 1) Closed by the time we found it.(round 1.5) So first thing this morning the kids and I headed out to the keyshop (round 3). The keymaker had a rough time with this unusual key, only to finally throw in the towel. “No puedo!” Remarkably, I understood that. “I can’t.” Not only did he ruin the duplicate, he ruined our only copy of the key to get into the building. Good God, how do we deal with THIS? If Benito isn’t there, we’re in big trouble. The apartment owners 1) only speak Spanish and 2) are Reno, Nevada right now.

To our immense relief, Benito was there when we arrived, so the front door was open. And even more to our relief, he said he would go get copies made for us. Otherwise, we would have had to leave someone home all the time until we got a new key. So round 4 was in Benito’s court. When he came up to our apartment he delivered the message that the keys (we asked for 3) would not arrive until next week because they had to be ordered from another town. Lucky for us and after some effort to figure out the Spanish, we came to realize that he was able to secure one key today. Fabuloso. We are to pick up the others next Tuesday. Round 5 awaits.

So – Bank, Keys, Phones. The next hurdle to tackle. Phones. We have visited several cell phone shops briefly so far. Here’s the upshot – it required six trips to the Phone House today to get phones and get taken for a ride and return to get the phones working and get half the money returned to us and then again to correct the type of coverage, and then finally to learn the sad truth that every cell phone call includes a 18 cent charge just to connect, even if you are calling Happy to Happy plan (or Blau to Blau). Nonetheless, 6 trips to the store later, we finally have working cell phones. They aren’t flawless, but better than none.

It’s our 16 anniversary today. We’re in Spain, figuring out how to live here, and exhausted.

All said, it was a good day. Bank account opened. Key crisis partially fixed. Phones up and running. Not a bad day for non-Spanish speakers. But this evening when I was cooking a crappy meal in our less than well appointed kitchen, I didn’t want to hear a word of Spanish. I just wanted English.

Es bueno. Really. Life is good. I guess we’re pretty much living in Spain now. Even though absolutely everything is a mystery.

We have arrived in Madrid

We have arrived in Madrid. We spent the first day doing our best to stay awake as long as possible to get our bodies on local time. So we walked and walked. We've had relative success with our Spanish on the simpliest of matters, but certainly recognize the need for language lessons pronto. We are incredibly fortunate to have a contact here who is helping a great deal. Today she went with us to four different government offices - two within walking range and the remaining two separate metro stops. We have decided to stay in the apartment - though Jack is slightly disappointed in it. I think it's fine. Pretty big. Absolutlely basic kitchen. But I think we can make it our home. Therefore, we have a hit list of things to accomplish. They all seem to depend of each other as a precursor, which makes it a bit confusing. Our visas say to go to the police station to register within the first 30 days to get a resident card. It seems that you need a resident card to do everything else - open a bank account, get utilities, phone, internet, etc. However, we can't open a bank account without a resident card. At the fourth stop today (bless Isabel's heart for taking us all over the city!) Isabel found someone who would give us a temporary something or other with which some banks will allow you to opening an account. We're to return to that location in 10 days, for something or other else, which should include proof that we have a bank account set up, which will allow us to apply for a resident card. Isabel also learned the following: we have to call from a land line to make an appointment (four actually, one for each of us - this sounds familiar) to apply for the resident card. Of course we don't have a land line. We were hoping to get a cell phone today. Isabel (again, bless her heart) said she will call and make the appointments for us. The bureaucrat told her that we will not be able to make appointments until October. Hard to see the logic behind all of this, but we're trying to laugh (or at least not cry) through it all.
Then we went to lunch where we met the restaurateur Filip who enjoyed swapping his bad English our bad Spanish with many laughs between. Again, we realize the necessity of language lessons.
The to-do list is LONG: get phones, keys, fans, a new bed, comfortable sheets, covers for two sofas and two chairs, a TV (part of the language learning plan), etc, etc. Get services set up, get a bank account, get a rental contract, etc. I fully appreciate now why our friend Wendy (also our renter) was about to strike when her husband wanted to bag their year in Spain just after she'd gotten everything set up. It's darn hard work and requires patience and fortitude. This we already know, and we haven't even hit the 48 hour mark yet.

So, we're fine. Tired. But fine. Alex seems to be digging watching Jack and me work at communicating in Spanish. It's pretty funny. I think Anna is in shock, probably because she knows the least Spanish and so shuts down in frustration.

Thursday July 29, 2009 Evening Update

This is what has been on our to-do list for the last two days:
Open bank account A
pply for resident card
Purchase cell phones
Get copies of apartment keys (5 total)
Get our names on the mail box
Get a fan
Get sheets, a new bed, various other items at IkeaT

This is what we’ve accomplished so far:
We have 2 new keys
We now have an appointment scheduled in November to apply for resident card
We have our names on the mailbox
We have spent hours and hours and miles and miles on our feet trying to accomplish the other items on our list.

Passports, visas, bedbugs and shingles

We landed in New York on Monday night and Jack checked his Blackberry for messages before we even got off the plane to find a message letting us know that our passports along with visas (FOUR VISAS!!!) left California the same day we left Nevada. On Tuesday, John and Ann brought us our beloved passports. What a relief to have those in our hands. And all with student visas. We’re still baffled by that, but we’re going with it.

On Sunday night before we left Reno I noticed spider bites on my neck, and wondered if I should try to get in to see my doc before we left on our noon flight on Monday. I had a swollen lymph node that was very sensitive that concerned me. But we were too frantic on Monday morning, so I decided that I could survive a spider bite, and could go to a doc in NY if needed. On Monday in NY I realized that the bite situation was worse and I needed to do a little surfing to find out what kind of spider bite I had. A little time on the net and I was convinced that it wasn’t actually spider bites, but worse – bed bug bites. So Jack, Tom, Sharon and I started surfing and were pretty much all convinced that we had a potential problem on our hands. I was horrified – thinking that I’d brought bed bugs home from the hotel we stayed at on one of our Adventures with the Spanish Consulate trips. Horrified, I couldn’t sleep all night – thinking that I now had to resolve infestations in Reno and potentially in Tom’s house in New York since we brought 11 bags with us.
So this morning we trundled off to the doctor here in NY. At the same time our friend Tia was on the job in Reno heading over to our house to check for evidence of a bed bug infestation in Reno while all of our baggage was quarantined at Tom’s house. The doc in the box listened to my tales of woe and delivered a wholly unexpected diagnosis of shingles. We trundled off to a dermatologist for confirmation. Shingles is it. Fortunately, if you get it before 50, it’s often not even treated. Currently it’s uncomfortable, but not too painful. I have drugs to reduce the potency and duration and pain killers in case it becomes painful.
So, it’s been an exciting couple of days. We’re off on a most excellent adventure. We realized today, Jack and I did, that this is really the biggest adventure we’ve ever struck out on – really sticking our necks out more than all other adventures before. Generally, I think we’re pretty calm. Quite frankly, I really didn’t feel very stressed, so I’m shocked at the shingles situation. (Funny thing was, a couple months ago someone suggested getting a vaccination against shingles that I ignored. You might want to consider it yourselves….)

Advenures with the Spanish Consulate

Sometime in April we remember the comment from the USAC office in Madrid. “First, get the visas sorted out.” My sister’s son Nicholas has First Communion on May 9. What a great time to go to San Francisco and get the visas sorted out! We’ll make an appointment with the consulate on Friday, May 8. In the mean time we’ll take a look at the visa application. How hard can this be?

Wendy and Jeremy advise against it. Fred and Anna advise against it. Our guides through this process have led the way without visas. But we’d rather do it on the straight and narrow. So we get started.

To apply for Spanish visas we collect a lot of documents. Birth certificates. Marriage certificate. Health certificates. We get finger printed so that we can get certificates saying we’re not bad guys. We get all the official certificates officially officialized with apostilles. (Note, if you ever plan a trip like this, figure the apostilles out early.) We travel to the Nevada Secretary of State’s office in Carson City multiple times. The people there are very nice to us. They push our paperwork through very quickly. They are pleasant. They are part of our feeling that the world is good. Our dear friend Tia accompanies me on a trip to California for more official document officializing. I get an official copy of our marriage certificate from the Plumas County Recorder then go to the California Secretary of State’s for yet more apostille action. Again, the people are nice. They are routing for us. We are checking off documents on the long list of what is required to apply for a visa.

Each document must be translated into Spanish. We are in first semester Spanish. We can’t translate. More help from incredible people. A friend and colleague, Patricia, offers to translate our documents. She and her mother, native Argentineans, know a lot about getting visas. They are angels and translate all those official documents and all the apostilles.

The date of our appointment with the Spanish Consulate in San Francisco is fast approaching as our visa applications become thick with bureaucratic paperwork. We have three copies of some documents; we have four documents of others. We have read and reread the instructions. We convince ourselves that the consulate is going to love us because we are so prepared. We have done such an exemplary job of reading the instructions carefully and following the rules. Nonetheless, we decide it’s best to show up in our Sunday finest and greet our visa application interviewers with the few Spanish words that we know. We are excited. Little do we know…

Adventures with the Spanish Consulate – Round One April 8, 2009

In which we learn
· that we should have started this process a long time ago (see March)
· that no matter how carefully you read the instructions you’ll never get the application right
· and nobody cares if you dressed in your Sunday finest when you arrive at your visa interview –
· oh and lastly, you need a separate appointment for each person applying for a visa. In our case this is four appointments. We end up not applying for a single visa and we reevaluate the advice of our Spain-veteran friends

Adventures with the Spanish Consulate – Round Two May 21, 2009

In which we learn
· that when the rules say your passport must be good for 6 months from the time you apply for your visa, it really means that it must be good for the entire length of your stay plus a little while.
· And therefore, Jack can’t renew his passport in the middle of our proposed stay because when you surrender your passport to get a new one, all visas therein are invalidated.
· Therefore, Jack needs to get an emergency passport renewal. Once again, we are saved by some very nice people at in an otherwise bureaucratic office. Jack proves that charm and persistence pays off.
· We finally have one visa application submitted

Adventures with the Spanish Consulate – Round Three May 27, 2009

In which we learn
· That even Spanish bureaucrats have heart
· There is some remote possibility that we could get 4 visas before leaving in July,
· but more likely Jack will get a visa and the kids and I will have to fly back to SF to pick up visas unless we want to adopt “Illegal Alien” as our theme song
· Surrender to the fact that the kids and I will have to fly from Madrid to SF in order to make this trip work. Surrender.
· Only by surrendering can this work.
· Surrender.

Adventures with the Spanish Consulate – Round Four
Call from Consulate two weeks before departure

In which we learn that
· This whole thing is a crap shot.
· The consulate calls and reports that Spain has told them that we’ve applied for the wrong type of visa.
· The consulate has now resubmitted our visa applications as student applications
· There is a chance that we will have four visas before leaving.
· Surrender. There is no alternative.

“My God, how did I get here?” -- Talking Heads

Nearly a year ago, Jack was fishing for sabbatical opportunities. One day I received an email from him while I was at work. Sub¬ject line: Madrid! Over the years (20 together now) we often fantasize about great adventures, long shots all. We sometimes, though not always, progress to a real possibility. But rarely do we see these plans through. The one exception was the 18 months we packed up house and kids and moved outside of Washington DC while Jack worked for National Science Foundation (Jan 2001 – July 2002). So when I read that Jack had an invitation from a collaborator in Madrid, Spain I somewhat flippantly thought: “Why not?” Quite frankly, I never in my wildest dreams thought that we’d actually pull it off.

Today we left our home in Reno and are en route to Madrid until August 2010. Even to get this far, it’s been a wild ride. Alas, I’m certain it’s nothing compared to the ride we just stepped onto.

Fall 2008
Jack corresponds with a potential colleague who invites Jack to come to the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid to work on a project modeling the effect of climate change on species distribution. New area for Jack – which meets his personal goal of retooling to have a greater impact on the world. He brings his physiology background to the table. “Sure!” I say. “It will never happen” I think.

January 2009
We’re serious enough that we exchange books on Spain for Christmas gifts. You should see our collection of travel books to places we’ve never been. But this time we enroll in first semester Spanish classes.

February 2009
We meet two families who have walked this path before us. They come over for dinner. The greatest development of the evening is befriending Wendy, Jeremy and Kestrel. Kestrel was about Alex’s age when they packed their bags to live in a small Spanish town for 9 months. Wendy tells us all about Kes’ “Big Sleep” at about six weeks into the stay – when language learning exhausted her to the point where she slept for 3 days straight. Now we know. Watch for this. Children thrust into a foreign language situation need to sleep. Will need to sleep a lot. Maybe sometimes for days at a time. Okay, we’ll know in advance.

I tell Wendy that I think one of my biggest hurdles will be renting the house. She suggests that perhaps she and Jeremy could rent it, furnished, for the year, with a very flexible attitude about check in and check out dates. Hmmm...

March 15-20, 2009
Jack visits Madrid to meet Miguel. This is when I think things will break down. Jack comes home disenchanted with idea of living in Madrid, and I assume this will nix the plan. Deep down, I feel some relief when it sounds like this could be the straw to break the camel’s back. But it turns out not. He meets with the study abroad consortium folks associated with UNR who are in Madrid. They are very helpful and let Jack know that our number one priority is to sort out visas. This comes back to haunt us. We should have known. Someone mentioned this. Remember, sort out the visas as soon as possible.

All Winter 2009
We ski. We ski every single day that we can. Jack and I work toward a PSIA Level 1 Certification with other instructors from our kids’ ski school. We go to dry land clinics every Tuesday night while our dear, wonderful, generous friends Shannon and Lou take our kids in for dinner every Tuesday night while we do this. We are clinicing with our PSIA pals on Saturdays. We are teaching wedge Christies every Sunday morning at Sky Tavern. We are clinicing every Sunday afternoon with our trainer. We are exhausted and happy and in love with skiing and watching Alex and Anna become such good skiers that we are in awe. We’ll never catch them again. And we ski every single day that we can.

I mention this because it means that we are not making progress on two important aspects of the Madrid plan: visas and learning Spanish. These seem like details that we aren’t fully ready to commit to yet. Yes, Jack and I continue to plug away at Spanish 111, but we’re not emotionally invested here yet. Not like we should be if we are going full immersion in a matter of months. I’m still telling myself this wasn’t a mistake. That the skiing was worth it. I’m betting that in about two weeks from today I’ll be wishing we spent more time with the flash cards and verb tables. But, it truly was a magical family ski year. It deserves its own blog.