Since I´ve been here there have been some things that just haven´t made sense. This week I had one these experiences. On Friday morning I went with Professor Jim Palmieri to the immigration office to renue my visa. I got there around 8:30 right after the office opened. After waiting 30 minutes or so Jim and I got called to the counter. We presented the officer with our passports as well as a copy of our passports (the page with our picture and the pages with our Argentine visa). After looking at our stuff the immigration officer said that we didn´t have the proper papers. When I asked what it was that we needed he told us that we needed every page of our passport copied. After some clarification we did indeed have to have every page copied, even the blank pages! A little frustrated and confused as to why this was necessary, we left the immigration office and headed to the nearest copy stand. Luckily this was only a block away.
After paying 4 pesos (1USD) I had my entire passport copied and we headed back to the immigration office to finish renuing our visas. Or so we thought. Upon return we were able to jump to the front of the line and talk to the same officer as before. We gave our newly made copies and our passports to the officer then found a seat to wait some more. After a little while we got called back up again and were told that we had to pay the 300 peso (75 USD) fee. We both reach for our wallets, when we are told that we cannot pay there. This is now the second thing that greatly confused me. Why couldn´t we pay there??? I´m not really sure, perhaps to try and combat corruption, maybe for security measures, whatever the reason it was an inconvienece. After looking quite bewildered we were told that we had to go to ¨Banco de la Nacion de Argentina¨ to pay the fee. We got directions to the bank and we´re on our way.
The bank was 5 or 6 blocks from the immigration office. When we arrived at the bank, I think that we were both a little stuned. We walked in and it didn´t seem like a bank at all. There were no tellers, no counters where you could be helped it was just a room with a couple of benchs. Thats when I spotted the sign saying that the bank was down the stairs. When we got down stairs there was one teller, and he did not seem overly thrilled about his job. The bank was very plain and kind of odd. I mean it was in the basement of this building and had only teller, there were not even any other stands if they wanted/needed another teller. We waited for our turn and after a little bit we were being helped. The teller took our papers scanned one of them and asked each of us for our 300 pesos. He then proceeded to stamp the hell out of the papers we had just given him. After unleashing his anger on our papers he ripped part of the papers off and gave us the rest to take back to the immigration office.
As I said he only scanned one of the papers so after leaving the bank we decided to go back and make sure he didnt need to scan the other paper. This was a good idea, however the bank teller didn´t appreciate it. It turns out that he didnt need to scan both of them, but I´m glad that we went back to check. At this point I went down to UCEL because I had a project to turn in, and I needed to explain to my teacher why I wouldnt be in class today. I then went back up to the immigration office with Jim. We got there gave our papers to the officer who took them and told us to take a seat to wait. We found out that the computer system was down so we were starting to wonder if we would ever get our visas. After waiting some, then waiting some more we discovered that we were the last ones in the immigration at 1 o´clock the time that the office closes. Luckily the officer said that he would finish up our visas that day. In the end we got our visas, but it was after alot of time and alot of trouble.
I think the most frustrating thing of the whole ordeal was the waiting. I knew that renewing the visa would probably take a while, I had no idea that it would take as long as it did. I was also concerend that as it was friday I wouldn´t get my passport back and it would sit at the immigration office all weekend. Because from the start of the process to the end of it, the immigration officer had our passports. I felt very insecure leaving my passport in the office, so I was very happy to get it back at the end with my new visa.
All around this has been a busy week for me. I had alot going on in school. I had a test in history of Argentina, a review to do in Economics, and as always homework for Spanish. I stayed busy with english class in the evenings as well. I dont know if I´ve talked about this yet so let me explain. As my Spanish has improved my English has gotten worse. Therefore they are making some of us take an english class to work on grammer. Ha ha ha...ok so thats not true. I go to an English course on Tuesday and Thursday night to assist an UCEL course. In the class I talk to the students in English so they can hear a native speaker, something they rarely get. It is alot of fun going to this class because I can see the difficulty they are having with the language and I can relate to it. I have the same difficulty just in reverse. Its also fun because I´ve gotten to see all the silly things about our language that don´t really make sense. I thought that Spanish was full of irregulars and very random. I had no idea how many words we shorten down, have but don´t use, or just verbs that have very wierd congugations. It has been very insightful.
A note to those who follow my blog. Next week is going to be even more irregular for my blog post than normal, as I am going to Bariloche. I actually might not even get another post up for 2 weeks. But don´t give up hope on me! I will make sure to get something new up on the blog as soon as possible! Bye for now, Chau!
-Nick
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