Orientation

Earlier this week, we had our orientation for the program. As previous Auxiliares (that is technically the name of our position - it basically means "Teacher's Assistant") had warned us, it was excruciatingly boring. They spent a lot of time talking about the setup of the public school system and very little time talking about anything relevant to our actual responsibilities. However, there was a really nice and funny girl from New Zealand who is a second-year Auxiliar who talked about her experience and gave us some useful advice, as well as some fun ideas for games to play with the kids.

Aside from this bright spot, the other important goal of the orientation was to explain how we can get our NIE and TIE - our foreigner's identification number and card (Número de identificación extranjero and Tarjeta de identificación extranjera). As I had been warned by reading blogs of previous Auxiliares, this is an unbelievably convoluted and labyrinthine bureaucratic process. Assuming everything goes smoothly, we probably won't have our cards until after Christmas - and that's if we're lucky!

Just to give you an idea, here are some of the steps in the process. Feel free to skip them, as this post is definitely more word-heavy and less picture-friendly!

1) We gave a photocopy of our passport, visa, and entrance stamp into Spain to the woman who ran the orientation, who was going to take all of them to the police station in order to make the appointment where we will get the physical card.

2) Some time around the second or third week of October, she should have heard back from the police station, and we will have to go to her office to pick up the letter with our NIE and our appointment.

At this point, we will have our foreigner's ID number, and can use it to sign up for bank accounts (at some banks) and do other things, but we still have to get the card.

3) After receiving the letter with the date of our appointment, we will have to go to a bank (any bank, apparently) with another form that they gave us at orientation and pay 15,50€. They will give us a receipt that we must guard with our lives.

4) We must go to a local ministry of something or other and get Empadronado, which essentially is just an official document saying we live where we say we live and pay rent, etc. I've heard this is actually not too hard, but one could imagine long lines, unending paperwork, soulless pen-pushers, etc.

5) Once all of this has been done, we just have to wait for our appointment, which will probably not be until some time in December. When the golden day finally rolls around, we have to go to the same police station where the woman took our forms - and here is my favorite part of the whole process - but it has no street number! All they could tell us was the avenue and the closest metro, and then they said to just wander around and ask people for the antigua cárcel (old prison), because that's what it used to be.

If I didn't already feel like I was in a Kafka novel, when they revealed this beautiful detail I was definitively convinced...

So anyway, we will go to the police station on the day of our appointment with all of the receipts and forms we will have collected by that point and they will take our fingerprints (still not sure what role this plays in the whole process) and give us ANOTHER piece of paper verifying that we came and that we met all the requirements and are ready to receive our cards. Once again, we must guard it with our lives - I don't even know what happens if you lose it.

In about 40 days, the cards will be ready, but no one will call us to let us know - we just have to go back to the mysterious police station with no address and hope we didn't waste 50 minutes on the metro only to find out we need to come again later.

If this wasn't all bad enough, there is one more bit of bureaucratic beauty that is the icing on the cake: our visas expire in December, because they are only intended to cover us until we get the card, but thanks to this ridiculous process, we probably won't have the card until January. This is fine as long as we stay in Spain, but if we want to leave to travel during Christmas, we will have to go to ANOTHER government office and get an Autorización de regreso - a piece of paper saying we are allowed to return to the country. This costs 10€ and takes two weeks to process.

Sounds like fun, doesn't it?