Madre Mia!

I think I'm hungover. My head hurts and I am nauseous. No it isn't that I was up late drinking wine... although I was up late drinking wine, it is the massive amount of paperwork moving to Spain entails! My hangover is a combination of the letdown from excitement and fear that fueled this move. Adrenalin got me through the initial pile of paperwork, but now I have zero left for the mounds and mounds of more paperwork still to be done.

I have no idea what I thought moving to another country would be like, obviously my imagination was full of charming cafes and cheap wine, what it was decidedly not was learning how to find proof of something that doesn't exist, then having it apostilled, then translated and signed by the authorities in Spain. Yet, here we are. As an example, I somehow managed to get "proof of non-marriage" for my daughter drafted as an original, then apostilled, then submitted to translators and finally signed. Now take that example of ridiculous string of happenings and multiply it by a million and that gets you through simply submitting for a visa.  

Once we arrived in Spain, got our visas (with only a couple revisions after 4 months of hard work), and decided on a place to live, we needed to be registered with the city. Sounds simple, but for starters, I was told to go to the "Padron" which as it turns out is properly called the Ajuntament de Sitges. These kind of little things that everyone thinks you should know and don't are exhausting. Trying to find the Padron office is the same as looking for something that doesn't exist...because technically it does not. Once I found the place, it was impossible to get an appointment so I tried the online suggestion of going and waiting for an opening in the office approach. Supposedly many people are successful with that tactic... what I found out was it is all up to luck. I had bad luck. I was cursed with a woman that seemed to be the gatekeeper to the agents that would help approve me. She was annoyed with me from moment number one. Maybe it was my shite spanish, maybe it was my sharp pointy face (I was once described that way), but whatever it was, she was not going to let me have an easy time with this process. She cited that my rental contract was not proper. I messaged my landlord asking for advice. He assured me it was and that he does many of them and the Padron always approves them. He sent me a photo of his driver's license in an effort to legitimize the contract. La Rena (the queen) was not happy with me one bit when I returned to her desk with this updated information the landlord gave me. All of which I had to try to explain in spanish, bad spanish. You know the feeling when someone radiates annoyance? Well that was now happening as she explained again the issues she had with the contract and that I needed to fix them before anything else could happen. She spoke fast and struck her fingernail hard onto the desk to indicate each of the 5 edits I must make, then pointed to the door. OK, that sucked. And I couldn't help but feel like I also sucked.

Messaging my lawyer, begging for someone to come hold my hand, I was told that while the very letter of the law would ask for these minute details on a rental contract, it was really really rare for anyone to demand it these days. We agreed that she must not like me and that I had no other choice but to try to have these edits made. Let me say again that I am really grateful for our landlord. Remember how I mentioned how great he was in the last post? Well, he didn't want to rewrite the contract in such a silly way, but he did and he supplied several signed copies "just in case". He also agreed that she must not like me and that I did indeed have bad luck. 

With a police fingerprinting appointment looming only a day away that I had to have my registration paperwork authorized for, I returned to the guillotine hoping for mercy. I was literally shaking. Now, I am a very confident, self assured woman, but speaking in spanish whilst doing scary government tasks with La Rena at the helm made me feel like a child having wet their pants at school. I handed her the contract and watched as she skimmed over each word with her hate filled nails. When she looked up she said "vale"(ok) and handed the paper back to me. She motioned to me to evacuate the space near her desk while informing me that without an appointment I may have to sit and wait for many hours for an agent to be available to help me, but I could wait in the open seats as far from her as possible. I had actual beads of sweat rolling down my face as I quickly grabbed a seat, exhaled and tried not to throw up. My daughter tried to give me a pep talk, she held my hand and kept me from having a panic attack. The agent I was able to see within the hour was kind and accepted my forms. Yay! Before I knew it I had our signed authorizations and we were happily skipping down the street to a celebration glass of cava.

Next was going to the police station in the next town over, Villanova i la Geltru. Once again my landlord saved the day and drove us there. Villanova is a city that I know nothing about and taking the train to get to this oh so serious appointment where my daughter and I would become official residents of Spain, might have broke me after the last few stressful days. 

The National Police Station is as intimidating as you think it might be. Armed officers are at the entrance, then in the lobby, then at each hallway; they are in charge of the flow of bodies and all happenings. Afraid I'd find another La Rena inside, I tentatively approached the officer that motioned me into the center of the large room. In stunted spanish I explained why I was there and provided proof of our appointments. He smiled kindly and assisted me with the check in machine, then escorted us around the corner to a new waiting area. Thank God he was so nice. I am pretty sure I would have cried if he was not. The process went pretty easily from there with only a handful of miscommunications due to my lack of spanish skill, and my daughter evidently not having fingerprints (it was really challenging to get the fingerprinting scanner to pick up on her fingerprints!), but when we were set free with our official residency papers in under an hour, it felt like the entire office, police officers and all, were saying "falicidades!". My landlord's car pulled up to pick us up and as soon as the door opened he asked "success?!?" I jumped into his arms saying "Si!Si!Si!". I guess I was a little emotional over the entire thing. 

My daughter and I celebrated that evening with a really special bottle of cava and a sunset view of the beach. Our cards would be ready for pickup in 30 days. We had done it, and the feeling of accomplishment was incredible. 

Now all we needed was to do all of this all over again when Jesse arrived. Oof. Turns out doing this process the second time is crazy easy. I prepared all the paperwork for Jesse, took him to the office and prepared to go to war with La Rena. We walked the beautiful winding streets there and stepped in, my breathing heavy with anticipation and I met eyes with a woman I had never seen before. WHERE IS LA RENA?!? Yep, not only did Jess not have to do any of the scary firsts on his own, or put together strange paperwork, he also never had to meet La Rena! A very friendly woman greeted us, scanned our overly elaborate paperwork and eschewed us on without a beat. We were in and out in less time than it took to walk to the office and back. Jess looked at me with an enormous grin and I said, with love, "I hate you so much right now."

30 days passed quickly and this time I did need to brave taking the train to the police station. It turns out it is a very easy 6 min ride and then a quick taxi. Easy peasy! Somehow all of these step are so full of stress, but we keep braving them. We happily tucked our new cards in our wallets and addressed each other as spaniards. We were giddy with excitement. It was as if we had summited Mount Everest unaware of the dark storm looming on our descent.

The next morning I woke to emails detailing the web of steps I needed to take to file with social security. On the list were 2 things I had been putting off, finally figuring out our very complex cell phone needs so that we have both a USA and a Spain number and getting a Spain bank which seems to be a completely ridiculous amount of hoops to jump through. It was the first depression I have had in Spain. Is this more than I can handle? I don't have the stamina! I actually thought maybe I need La Rena to come tell me what I am doing wrong. 

I felt on the edge of losing it. The feeling of being like a plastic bag, drifting through the wind... feeling paper thin...already buried deep, 6 feet under screams...  but I stepped out onto our little balcony, looked at the ocean and golden light and took in a huge, grateful to be in Spain breath and thought 'you got this'

Come on people, sing it with me 

'Cause baby you're a firework! Come on show 'em what your worth!'

Ya Spain, let's do this!