I'm a fully legal resident!

FINALLY, the paperwork has gone through. I got a letter today that said that a letter was coming that would lead to something else, and with this something else I could get my residency card and ... but the crux of it all was that I'm now a legal resident of The Netherlands, and I also have the right to work! Yippee! Of course, Ian's a little more excited about this being able to work thing than I am.

That's not really true. I just added it for your reading enjoyment. Actually, he thinks I should wait until after the wedding to work. I heartily agree. Seriously, it does make sense for me to wait to work until later. And before you get all judgmental on me and think it's because I'm being lazy and eating chocolate covered cherries while watching Sex in the City, well, that's not it. If I wait to work, I can continue with my Dutch lessons and maybe reach some level of proficiency with this language invented by Satan without having to concentrate on work at the same time.

So I would have studied for the Dutch test I have next Monday, but over the lunch hour I had to take the letter explaining that I'm a resident to Ian. It was three pages long and I understood very little of it. I thought it was probably a letter of denial because we put a stamp in the wrong place or something. At any rate, that's why I didn't study this morning. And I would study tonight, but we're going to be celebrating my new resident status with Thomas. We'll also be celebrating something of Thomas's, but I think that's still a secret so I'm going to hardly mention it here. But if you see him, congratulate him and that way he can decide whether to tell or not and I'll not have ruined his suprise. Or at least, not much.

(Thomas, the tongue sticker-outer with the big secret.)

So I’m going to start studying right after writing this. It's a little difficult, though, because I've been nursing a migraine for the past 36 hours. I talked with Mom last night and she said that Alex (my brother Ken's daughter) started taking riboflavin (vitamin B-2) for her migraines and it's apparently worked. Well, that was testament enough for me. I got on my bike after I left Ian at lunch and went to the money machine (by the way - the exchange is now about $1.26 per Euro. The dollar is weaker every day...). I took out some money for the B2 and made my way to the the pharmacy Ian suggested, but they didn’t have any B-2.

On the way there, after getting money, I stopped at the open market and almost bought a new lock for my bike. It’s been kind of acting up. I didn’t get one, though, because I wasn’t sure of the quality of the market guy’s locks. Instead I went to the Inburgering office (the place that "intergrates" me into society here) to give Haneke (my contact person) the letter. She had asked me to please bring it to her the moment I got it. But she wasn’t there to take my letter. The receptionist asked me if I wanted to leave the original (as if...) or have her make a copy of it. I'm almost certain the copy she made won’t get to Haneke or anyone else who cares about it. But I'll deal with that next week. For now, my priority was to study.

I went outside and unlocked my bike. And the key broke in the lock.

I wish I had pictures of all of this, but I don't. You're just going to have to trust that I am telling the truth here and imagine the visuals yourself this time.

I went to Gamma (a local home improvement store) and rented some bolt cutters. I returned to my bike. As I started to cut the bolt, a big-boned Dutch woman got right up in my quickly diminishing peace and started yelling at me. I smiled politely and asked if she could kindly curse at me in English, as I didn't understand her Dutch one little bit. She immediately switched to English and asked what the hell I thought I was doing.

So I humoured her and explained.

She did not, at all, believe me. Luckily, I had the broken key as evidence or I think she might have killed me right there in front of the Inburgering office.

Once I showed it to her, she apologized profusely and said, "We have a problem in this country with our bikes being stolen." No duh. Where the f**k was she when my last bike was stolen?

Anyway, I finished cutting the chain and lock, liberated my bike, went back to Gamma and returned the bolt cutter, got another lock and came home.

And now I'm going to study Dutch. Well, for 45 minutes. Then I'm going to go get Ian's bike at the bike shop. His chain broke yesterday.

It's a lovely picture, all these Dutch people on their bikes in packs of 30 or 40. Well let me tell you something, it's a lot of work being carefree, people.

And now I really am going to study.

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Go Fetch, pt. II

Today the Dutch government played "go fetch" with us again. We were asked to visit our Embassies. Again. In Amsterdam. For documents we have already provided. One of the four things they have asked for is our affidavits of non-marriage. (For those of you who haven't heard of these, you're not alone. In most European countries, you can look up whether a person is married or not. Since we don't have a way in Britain or the U.S. to prove that we're not married, the countries here rely on an affidavit of non-marriage. Basically, we pay our Embassies money, then they ask us if we're married. We say no. They ask us if we promise we're not married. We say yes, we promise. Then they give us an affidavit that says that we promise that we're not married.)

So, this morning we took the bus to the train station and took an early train to Amsterdam so we would get everything done by noon, when the Embassies shut down.

Once in Amsterdam, we got off the train and took a tram to the closest stop to the British Consulate. We then trudged about a mile to the Consulate, where Ian obtained his Affidavit of Non-Marriage.


It was, of course, raining. I know the building doesn't look like much from this photo, but it is nice. The street is pleasant and the Consulate's staff is very cordial. They even allowed me to go in with Ian.


When the guy with hand-held metal detector came over to me before I went into the building, I spread my legs and held out my arms. He smiled and said, "You're not at the American Embassy. You don't need to do that."


They even let me take my camera inside. After we had talked with the vice-consul and Ian promised that he was unmarried, we went to this window where he paid 48 Euro and picked up the affidavit.


We thought that maybe a croissant would take the chill out of the rain, so we crossed the street and went in to a bakery.


Ian looked at all of these wonderful things and got a chocolate-chip cookie. Sometimes I wonder about him...


Full of sugar and starches, we walked back to the tram stop, boarded it and made our way to the American Embassy.


We got off the tram,


and made our way to this building.


We stood at the gate and announced ourselves to someone we couldn't see, told them I wanted an affidavit of non-marriage, then were let inside the gate to the sidewalk on the other side of the gate.


Once inside the gate, we saw there was a line of people waiting to be called inside the building, one at a time, through what resembled a prison door. Unlike at the British Embassy, no one was joking here. This was serious business.


Sorry - that's all the pictures from my Embassy. They took my camera once we got inside that prison door. Once inside, I was asked to pay about 20 Euro, handed a blank affidavit of non-marriage form and told to fill it out. I did, then handed it back in. A while later, my name was called. I was asked if I promised I wasn't married. I said I promised. I was then given the form back with a signature of the equivalent of a notary and we were out of there.


We went back to the street and waited for a tram to take us back to the station. (The U.S. Embassy was, at least, across the street from the tram line...)


We got to the train station in Amsterdam,


and noticed it was about noon.


We took the train and got off in Utrecht,


And immediately got onto a bus that took us to this place - the equivalent of a city government building.


This is the front of the building. I think this was the third time we had been here.


On the ground floor, we got two certificates (one each) to show where we lived. They cost 10 Euro each. When we give them to the government, the government will be able to deduce that we live together - a requirement for my residency. (Yes, we know it was the government that gave them to us in the first place. What, have you never played this game before?)


After going upstairs to get the temporary residency stamp in my passport extended,


we went home. Six hours after we left (and, after the cost of bus, tram and train tickets, a little more than a hundred Euros later), we had two more documents and one more stamp to add to our collection.

Tuesday, we get to go to The Hague to get them legalized. (I'll explain that later...)

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