Spanish Organizational Patterns and Techniques-
Moving at the speed of this tractor:
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I wasn't originally going to include this in my blog, but I just encountered the straw that broke the camel's back. Let's talk for a moment about Spanish organization, punctuality, etc. This week, Ian and I traveled once more to Toledo in order to secure our NIE's; which are the Spanish equivalents to social security numbers, except obviously ours are temporary. The program had booked appointments for all of the Americans working in CLM so that we could all go as a group, do the paperwork and get on with our lives. Turns out that was way too easy. So 15 of us arrived, only to find out that one of the most critical people in the whole process, The Stamp Your Paperwork Man, was either a) sick or b) in a meeting. We don't really know which because they gave us both excuses. Additionally, this man's job was apparently so nebulous and shrouded in mystery that nobody else at the entire office knew what exactly what this man's job consisted of. (Well??) I wish those were the only excuses we were given, but it got better. They also told us they would not be able to process our stuff because their equipment wasn't working. What equipment, you ask?
Oh, that's right, The Copy Machine. How in the world can an office continue to do work when The Copy Machine isn't working (allegedly)??? Frankly, even more impressive than their display of incompetence was the mere fact that many of these people manage to blink and breathe at the same time. Regardless of who was actually sick, malfunctioning, out of toner or in an important meeting, we were sent away and told to come back the next day, despite the fact that many of us had come from over 2 hours away, and ironically, were missing our jobs to do this. Okay, fair enough.
So we show up the next day and for whatever reason, only half of us were initially allowed to have our paperwork submitted because allegedly only half of us had appointments. So we thought, "That's strange, because yesterday we had appointments and weren't allowed in, yet today, Stamp Your Paperwork Man is back, The Holy Copy Machine must have been repaired or had some animal sacrificed for it's health, but we don't have appointments even though yesterday we were told to come back by these very people?" Whatever. I was one of the lucky ones who made it through in the early going. Luckily for Ian (who didn't have an appointment), they took the first ten minutes of their precious siesta time to process the paperwork for the other Americans who hadn't been so fortunate earlier. So a process that should have taken a mere hour or so ended up taking about 28 and costing us two day's worth of missed teaching time. Awesome.
Today-About 3 Hours Ago:
Let me turn now to the straw that broke the camel's back. As I had written in my previous posts, Ian and I were supposed to be traveling to Tenerife tomorrow (Nov. 6). We had planned on taking the bus to Madrid at 7.40 pm, then staying in the airport during the night and hopping on our plane at 6.15 am and being on our way. Easy? No, we forgot where we were...not easy, not at all. So we arrived at the bus station and waited. And waited. And waited some more. No bus. Maybe a copy machine at the bus station in Madrid wasn't working, but for whatever reason, there was no bus. But Drew, did you misread the schedule? Was it the right day, the right line? No, yes, yes. After being thoroughly angry and confused, Ian and I scoured the internet to make sure we weren't the ones to make a mistake and sure enough, all of the information we found led us to believe that a bus should have come to La Villa De Don Fadrique on Thursday, November 5th at 19.40 leaving for Madrid. But, nope. So, Ian and Drew will be going to Tenerife will be kickin' it in La Villa this weekend, because we have no other possible way to reach Madrid by 6.15 am tomorrow morning. If you're curious and want to see where the AISA bus lines made their egregious error, you may visit the site apparently titled: We are f*cking morons, and scroll about 4/5ths of the way down to the timetable titled "La Villa de Don Fadrique-Madrid (Lunes a Sabados)".
Okay, I've had about enough ranting. Although, I do love to learn how to say "Donkey" in every language I encounter. In Arabic, it is "hemar." In Spanish, it is burro, and they use it appropriately enough, to call someone stupid. With that said:
AISA &
Oficina de Extranjerias:
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