Visa Adventure

On Wednesday, my dad and I drove 8 hours to Los Angeles for my appointment at the Spanish Consulate the next day. For those of you who I haven't complained to yet, acquiring a Visa for Spain is no easy matter. Thankfully, I have a wonderful, organized mother who got me through it.

Some context on this very stressful process: the Visa application for Spain is very involved and has quite a few requirement on how recent some documents need to be. Also,  there were several forms that needed to be translated into spanish by an official translator and notarized. It also required documents from AFS Spain that certified I was enrolled in school there and had funds and medical insurance and such. A large amount of stress came from the fact that AFS Spain had not even sent these documents to AFS USA by Monday of this week. There was some worry that I would not have them before my appointment and I'd have to reschedule my appointment for the end of August and therefore not receive my visa in time and have to depart late. What ended up happening was that we received scans on the documents in an email which would suffice until we received the mailed documents and then could send the originals to the Consulate.

NOW ON WITH THE STORY
There wasn't too much traffic so my dad and I decided to go to the beach that evening for dinner (and because our hotel wasn't very interesting at all). It was beautiful, and we were able to watch the sunset. We ate dinner at "Bubba Gump's Shrimp Shack" which was amusing.

Also, I have to mention that the drivers in L.A. are completely insane. It made me tense just sitting in the passenger's seat. According to my dad, California is also the only state that allows motorcyclists to drive inbetween cars, which they most certainly take full advantage of. If you are nervous at all about driving, stay away from L.A.

The next morning we got up bright and early so that we'd have plenty of time to find the Consulate and park; we actually did so with very little trouble. The Consulate was on the 8th floor of a building not too far from our hotel.

We got there early and were told to wait until they called us - little did we know that this would be a whole hour and a half later (maybe two hours? I'm not quite sure. It seemed like forever) as they were running behind schedule. While we were waiting we watched as an older woman with no documents and the wrong appointment  tried to ask questions about getting citizenship in Spain, and another woman with some very odd clothes failed to understand that the documents or something that she wanted would take a very long time to arrive. There were also quite a few college students there applying for visas for exchanges as well, and some other people. While waiting wasn't exactly fun, I did get to listen to quite a few conversations in Spanish and try and understand what was being said. Mostly I could get the gist of what they were saying.

When my name was finally called the woman thanked us for waiting so patiently. She was actually very sweet, considering some of the people she had been dealing with that morning. The appointment maybe took 10 minutes, and then we were done (finally)! Dad and I decided to go to the beach one last time before heading home.

me on Venice Beach

 There was some traffic heading out (around 2:30) but it wasn't as terrible as it could be. Heading home we saw this lovely rainbow, and then later (although I couldn't get a good picture...) we watched the moon rise and, I swear, it looked about three times bigger than usual and a soft, golden orange. We got home at around 10, absolutely exhausted, but victorious.

Of course, because I'm going to be in Spain longer than 6 months I'll have to deal with more Visa stuff once I'm actually in the country. Within 30 days of arriving I'll have to visit the nearest police station with a bunch of other documents but I'm not going to worry about that right now :b

Also, the day after we got back (Friday) I had one last fundraiser at Thomas Byers Guitar Studio during First Friday. It was fun (despite being very tired) and I talked to quite a few people who had either been to Spain, were from another country and in the process of traveling around ours, or knew someone who had traveled and studied in Spain! As always, thank you Gretchen for all your help.

Just ONE MONTH till I leave!