yesterday

For those of you that have ever traveled extensively over seas to a place that requires you to have a visa, you probably already have a pretty good idea of how my day went yestaurday but for the rest of you this may be a whole new story for you.

Yestaurday I had to go to the consulate in spain to recieve an extention on my visa so I can be here legally until May. So armed with my filled out forms, little pictures attatched to each, and random other papers with information just in case they were in a bad mood and felt like asking for more information, I walked to the bridge a few blocks down from house. I should mention the night before I didn´t get to sleep until 12 and was up at 5am so it was dark outside and I had only gotten 5 hours of sleep. So it is raining here in Spain, and I mean pouring so that morning I was dressed in a light sweater, it wasn´t snowing so I thought I would be fine, and an umberella on my arm jumping around the puddles scattering the sidewalks and streets.

I met my friends Cari Ann (I met her Monday at the year long ISA students´ meeting and we exchanged numbers) and Brian ( the other boy in my program that will be here a year). Sleep deprived we started our half hour long treck to Plaza de España. We arrived at the doors at 6:15 to find a whole lot of other people standing, sitting, in a line waiting for the doors to open. The wind was blowing a little and couples were huddled under raincoats against the building. We sat for about 20 minutes then an armed security guard opened the doors and the whole line moved into the building and up the stairs to a balcony that overlooked a beautiful courtyard with a stream that runs in a circle with two bridges, street lights, and a fountain in the middle with trees around it(it is really pretty and when I learn to pics up I will show it to you, I think it looks romantic). So our trio acted like all the other foreigners and sat against the wall for 2 hours. I had to keep getting up to walk around because I was cold, it rained HARD and was king of windy. Finally, anther guard opened the doors and the line filed into the building to wait in another line to get a number. I recieved the number C031 which was good but not. We then sat in a waiting room with about 100 other people, and sat, and sat some more for 6 hours in this room. It took on average 1 hour for every 2 numbers and the category C was moving faster then category D but B was usually 10 numbers ahead of C the whole time kind of frustrating. So by the time the C category got to 21 we were getting anxious. Finally my number came up on the electronic board and I hurried to the desk.

I sat in front of a man and he went through my documents and by the end he had completely unstapled everything gave me back a lot of the copies and all my pictures that my directors had insisted that I include, and given me a date to return. I then rushed to my last class of the day, which for this class we walked around and looked at sights near the school.

Also, last night Ash and I went with a group of people I met at the police station yestaurday, random I know, and they had a Hispanic lady come in and teach us how to make paella (a traditional dish here) and it was so much fun! I think we will meet up with them again on sunday for bible study.

I´ll write again when I return from Morocco!
Lauren