Winter is coming... again...

Hey folks!

Let me start by wishing all our friends and families that are mothers a Happy Mother's Day!!!

On this cloudy gray sunday morning, I figured I should write a blog because it's been a while and the last one was a quick one... But I still kinda feel like we have nothing to say. But we probably do. So I'll start on rambling about anything that comes to my mind and that might spark some interesting anecdotes.

Well first, on the subject of this blog, for the last 3 or 4 days there has been a complete sudden change in the weather and yeah, that means that winter is coming. Obviously, just coming from Montreal's winter, I'm not so thrilled about it. You know that winter is coming because it's cloudier, it never gets as warm in the afternoon even when there is sun, and at night there has been some pretty strong storm (scary for a chicken like me) with heavy rain and super strong winds. The thing with living on the 16th floor of a building in a city shaped like a bowl is that there is no other building to shield your apartment from the wind. You can hear it howl, which then sparks catastrophic scenarios in my head where the windows explode and we are being sucked out of the apartment like in a plane. Because I'm insane and am also afraid of heights so I combine the two together. I'm learning to deal, especially given that it hasn't happened yet so I realise it might not be as common as I thought...

The rest of our days have been occupied by all sorts of bureaucratic steps, related to us trying to get a visa to stay, trying to get internet, etc. For the internet, in the last post I said that they would come by to install it within 15 days. Well in an unexpected turn of events, they showed up after only 4 days!!! And it works! I mentioned too how maddening the visa stuff was, but I really want to share the experience with you guys so I'll give you a step by step description of the day we went to Interpol and the police...

We had already gone to both places to ask for instructions, i.e. what do we need to get the piece of papers we need. Interpol were really nice. The police station was just a little more confusing... It is built like most Andean structures: you get in through the main door and you're faced with an outside parking lot/patio. It's really confusing. You expect a roof, with desks and people behind the desk to help you with stuff. After standing there for about 30 seconds all confused we started looking around and noticed stairs on the right side, with a thing that said INFORMATION at the top of them. That directed us to one flight of stairs up to a posted list of everything we need for our 2 documents. It's a loooooong list.

So we show up again at least ready for the interpol form and it took about an hour and a half total to get our prints and ask us questions about our parents, where we live, etc. By the end of it it was 11:30 and I was famished so we decided to have quick lunch close by then go up to the police station because we realised there was a lot of stuff we didn't understand from their spanish instructions. The lunch place we went to only opened at noon, so we bummed around a bit. Then around 1pm we were out and ready to go to the police, but I suddenly got suspicious... "Do you think they close the police station for lunch here? It can't be, I mean, they're the police and crime happens at lunch too..." Ah, the innocence... Of course the police station closes for lunch! From noon to 2pm!!! So we went to an internet place and waited. At exactly 2pm we are at the 2nd floor where we need to be and there's a line up of people waiting for it to open. We asked our questions (one of them being do we need witnesses to which the guy said no but since the secretary at the Archaeology Institute swears we do need them) and then left. But we knew one of the thing we needed was a letter from a lawyer and during all our waiting time we had noticed how there was tons of lawyer offices right next to the police. We went in to see one and got our letters (2 each) really quickly for about 3.50$ each letter. That's cheaper than I thought for hiring a lawyer! Then the lawyer swears that with this letter and our passport photocopies, we can apply for one of the two things we need from the police for our visa... So we decide to go back again... Oh my...

We get to the 2nd floor, say what we want, show our stuff. The guy says we still need our Interpol certificate (which we will only have 13 days later) but we show the receipts we got from Interpol so he tells us that will do but we need to go up one flight of stairs and have it authorized or something like that. Bear in mind all this is in spanish and we understand some but not all. We go up one flight of stairs and obviously there is about 10 doors and the guy never said where we needed to go. By some incredible luck, just walking around and looking at titles on doors we found the right one straight away. The nice lady there tells us what she really needs is a photocopy of our Interpol receipt. So we go down 3 flights of stairs, cross the street, photocopy it, go back up 3 flights of stairs, and get here to certify our photocopy of receipt. We can now go back down one flight of stairs, wait back in line to talk to the first guy who gives information. We give him our stuff and they start painting our fingers black again for more fingerprints! And they only have an ink-filled rag to help you clean up afterwards. We think we are done then the guy looks at our stuff again and says "this is for local and not international? Then you have to go at the desk at the back of the room". Now the "room" is a corridor with one desk next to the other, no way to form a line up. "The desk at the end" are multiple desks and we don't know which one we need. We just go "in line" at one, hoping it's the right one. It's really long because the one guy works at 2 of the desks (I guess lunch time wasn't long enough, someone still didn't show up). Because it's long I send Wes to ask some other guy where we should go and the old man says we need to go back to the front of the corridor. So we do. And it was wrong. We really needed to be at the desk where we were waiting and now lost our spot. We wait some more until we get to give our stuff. Now, we were told that was the easiest paper to get, and the fastest - one guy even said it's 5 days for Canadians. We were there May 1st and the guy tells us that 1) we need to go back there to give him the Interpol paper on May 13th when we'll receive it, and 2) it will be ready May 26th. MAY 26TH!!! Oh, and by the way, my visa to stay here expired today (May 11th). And I can't get another one, I need the one we are working on right now. Now, I'm not doing anything illegal, the guys at immigration told me once I show up with all my things I will only pay a fee per day I didn't have a visa - and it's a rather small fee. Also, that was the easy piece of paper to get at the police, we still have to get the complicated one where we need to provide a copy of our landlord's passport (?!), the Interpol thing obviously, and all sorts of fun little details... I promise I wont write you a detailed account of how it happened, that would be way too long.

ok, fun tidbits now! The day we took possession of our apartment we were crossing the park in front of our building and noticed a lot of people and some really weird all wood bicycles. I noticed a lot of the people around them looked like the rich gortex-wearing tourist we see and/or the Discovery Channel crew that worked with us last year. Then I noticed it: a yellow signed that said "U-Turn" with a yellow and red flag on it... It was The Amazing Race!!!!! (It's a fun reality show, google it if you don't know what it is) I was sooooooo excited! I was torn between staying there until contestants showed up or going into our apartment. Given Wes' lack of enthusiasm I decided to go back home. But hey, next Amazing Race they will be showing our building and our park!

ok, not so fun tidbit but not too bad, last monday at noon all our electric appliances stopped working. We went to the administration of the building and found out that the last renter didn't pay her electricity bill for the last 3 months so they cut us (Electropaz, not the administration). I am so happy to have the administration to help us with all sorts of things here (although we do pay them a monthly fee). The lady called our landlord and she figured out from old records how much was due and he went and paid it. Just to make this more stressful and annoying that's the day the internet people called to say they'd show up the next day. I was so afraid we'd still be out of electricity so that they wouldn't be able to install the modem! But the administration lady swore to me that they usually put it back the same day at 7pm if it gets paid. Because I didn't want to be flicking the light switches on and off every two minutes to check if electricity was back, we decided to go see Iron Man. It rocked. And when we came back, electricity was back too. And I'm out.