8:20 wake up (20 minutes late) eat breakfast, get sophia dressed/fix hair (it's picture day)
8:40 still fixing sophia's hair
8:50 sophia's hair fixed, perfect braids, breakfast eaten, get myself dressed
9:52 sophia's hair a mess
9:20 (what the hell happened to the time??) max runs out door with sophia (he is faster and she has to be at preschool by 9:30)
9:45 max is back. wait for oliver to arrive, we need to borrow his car
10:00 oliver arrives, was delayed due to unusual amount of traffic (accident at linate). jump in car, drop oliver off at metro, jam to Sesto San Giovanni -again molta traffica! freakin out!
10:20 whew, looks like we're gonna make it
10:25 cant find street, looks like we're not gonna make it for the:
10:27 appt at police station (waited for months to get the appt, which arrived 6 months ago, then waited for months for the date to arrive)
10:27 arrive, park car, walk to the wrong entry, run to the right entry, where upon we are handed:
so basically the appt we recvd months ago, was just so that we could pull a # and wait in line.
10:29 polizia guards explain how to get to 'immigration office' -couldnt understand a thing
10:30 walk into wrong office
10:31 walk into next office, red electronic display says
Now Serving: 150 (inside it is hot, humid, smelly and crowded-with people from albania, romania, morocco, senegal, afganistan etc who look like theyd slept there, they'd been waiting so long. many have their kids in tow. 'office' consists of 4 graying and dingy dirty walls, a row of 'desks' along the wall opposite the entry. they are painted white and each of a different height, placed side by side to serve as a 'service windows.' chairs face the 'service windows' and are crowded in three crooked rows, squished against the back wall so that no one but the front row has leg room. there is loads of empty space between the seats and the windows-as if the people working dont want to get too close to the people waiting-like maybe they have cooties or something like that. i know we have it easy compared to most people there-otherwise they wouldnt endure all that just to get a permesso di soggiorno,(like green card))
10:32 unable to believe that we were given such a precise time just to pick a number to wait, max goes outside and confirms with a different cabinieri if this was the correct office. it was.
10:32 and
30 seconds we sit down on the stairs outside
10:35 the polizia comes out and says we should go wait in the office because the numbers move fast, hundreds of people have already come and gone. (we saw none of them-maybe there was a different exit???) . we tell him
NS:150, but he goes on insisting. we get up, walk over and
NS: 152! butthead, MYOB! so we sit down EXACTLY where we were because even if we lose our spot, it is our bees wax and not his.
10:40 bored/cold, we start doing the math about what time we will be called.
NS:156we bet breakfast for closest to time called. my guess:
11:22am max's guess: 11:30am 10:41 tick tick tick. what better way to pass time than to think of a way to blog this event! i snap foto above. max decides to snap foto of
NS counter.
10:42 max walks in, standing in the middle of the door, aims camera at display. man JUMPS up and says, hey hey what the hell are you doing?? jumps out of the office, does the 50 meter dash and shouts,
you cant take pictures here. snaps camera away from max.
this is a govt office, you cant take pictures in a govt office (max indicates there is no sign and he was just taking a picture of the display).
tries to make max erase the pictures, that he didnt get a chance to snap. what are you some sort of reporter? are you italian? show me your documents? what are you taking pictures for?? blah blah blah. max tells him if he was a reporter on a secret mission, he certainly would have a better camera, and not stood in the middle of the doorway, in front of the desks in a bright red jacket. more blah blah blah.
10:43 max comes out laughing.
10:45 man comes out scowling, surveying area, but no eye contact with max.
10:53 man comes back out and makes max go to a different office, he re-shows documents. the boss of the first guy grouses about the exact same thing,
blah blah you reporter, blah blah no pictures, blah blah blah. then says to max, w
hat are you doing here, you could have had the green card months ago if you went to the office at montebello. (well, by now we are here and might as well wait, right?hmmmm....should have rethought the idea)
11:02 NS:165, we start re-betting, looks like neither of us will be even close.
new bets, loser buys lunch:
me: 11:52 am max:12:15pm
11:15 we go sit inside, freezing outside. by now a few people have gone out, and fewer people have gone in - its not as crowded as before, some places to sit open.
11:20 they start calling one number after another and telling those people to go into a different office. dont know why.
11:22 time of my original guess.
NS: 179 we think max might actually win...would the numbers keep rolling? by now there are only about 10 of us in the dank room. (we think that many people came without appts early in the morning to pull numbers, and when the office realized they couldnt serve everyone and were making the people with appts wait a vey long time, they started to send people without appts, but holding numbers elsewhere to be helped)
11:30 time of max's original guess NS: 186, so close yet so far away....
11:41 this is the half-way pt between max's original guess and my second guess
NS:190. who will the winner be? the competition is getting heated, we are watching the clock with eagle eyes! max thinks that we are probably going to end up at the window where the guy scolded him like a red headed step child.
11:46 NS:194 and the winner is....ME! lunch is on max! The window we ended up at was not the guy that told off max, instead it was an italian that BARELY spoke italian. there was a clear piece of thick plastic barrier between
him and
us (no hole for speaking/hearing better, just a small slot underneath to pass papers). he had such a thick accent, even max had to ask several times that he repeat himself. this is what we were told.
what kind of visa do you have? just the tourist one because we are waiting for the permesso (duh?). (looks over passport)
when did you come back? oct 2007. that wont work out, you're not supposed to do that, the visa is expired. your offices told us to fill out the paper work and do it like that. well, yes uhm. are you married? yes, it says on the documents right there, that you have in your hand, that you are looking at. yes, well, uhm what kind of permesso do you want? here we do electronic, it will take 3 months for you to rcv it. (in three months we will be back in CA, we cant come back to the office and get it) or you can get the paper kind and they will give it to you right away, but that is at the office on Montebello. whats the difference? (reiterates the statement) well if we go to Montebello...all the paperwork we put in, all the different taxes we paid, all the running around we did, all the waiting, what was that for? for nothing, you could have gone to Montebello months ago and you wouldnt have had to wait. why didnt you do that in the first place? because some one at your offices told us to follow the procedures we followed. yeah, great thanks. NEXT! That is the story of the great Psyche!, but not the end of our day....
12:00 back into the car-(max is pissed. i compare it to the amazing race, rush rush rush, just when you think you are ahead, you end up waiting for the next roadblock to open and you are at the same level as all the other teams). we take advantage of having the car and go to get contact lenses, diapers and t.p. at carrefour where you can buy bigger (not like costco big tho) and it costs less. even tho i won the bet, max chooses McD's to soothe his frustration and depression. sounds good to me too!
1:45 we head back towards home, it's starting to rain, max calls mechanic to find out what time we can pass take care of business with the old white car. no one will be in until after 5 (does anyone actually work in italy?). used car lots are probably closed at this time for lunch, so we cant go there either-we were hoping to do most of this
before sophia got out of school.
2:00-4:00 watch my name is earl, amazing race, while painting more of big gigantic tree and sky for sophias room (finally)
4:00 go get sophia
4:50 (no traffic so we made it to pavia pretty quickly) - max takes care of car stuff. cost: E250 to get rid of the car. which is kind of irritating because you they will change the motor and turn around resell the thing for a profit. (but the alternitives are for us to pay for a used motor installation that will cost too much money so its not worth it or have the car towed back to one of the used car dealerships for a credit trade in, but towing will cost loads. see the triple edged sword?)
5:00 we unload our belongings from the white car and Max kisses her goodbye:
5:30 back to milan, loads of traffic. oliver's car is a little dirtier than i expected, dont think the guy has cleaned the car once since he bought it. cleaning products from our car trunk now in his car. nothing to do, so i cleaned the front area of the OMobile.
6:30 arrived at a used car place. see a couple of interesting deals. we just have to decide. i am leaning towards the blue car we saw today (cant remember model) -it has well maintained, low milage, is space and costs about 8,900-but it is a 2004. max is leaning towards the ford focus we saw last week because it is really new, low milage, but costs 13,900.
6:50 walking back to the car i noticed this bar:
do you think that extra H is on purpose??
7:00 always time to splash in a few puddles! o calls, we decide dinner together at the south american restaurant by criss's. call greta and ask her too.
7:45 max decides to drive past restaurant just in case, foreign restaurants dont usually last too long in italy. good thing, it was closed.
8:00 o calls back and wont finish work in time for dinner.
8:07 check email, facebook, cnn and foxnews. frantically clean house, scrub paint off floor, tidy up rooms/bathroom, clean kitchen cook, make dinner.
8:46 eat dinner, tomato beef, steamed egg custard, rice.
9:45 criss, ol, greta come over for drinks. greta made me a card to celebrate my end of being an illegal alien....will try to scan in, its a visual thing.
1:05 in bed WHEW!
Make a wish and blow out the candles!!
Make a wish and blow out the candles!!
Giulia, caught in the action.
Zio Nanni saves the day...just when Sophia was about to throw a big tantrum, Nanni arrived directly from Luxembourg with a fishing game for Pia and saves the day!
With loads of participation from friends, we had enough to get a present that moved Khatia to tears, a sewing machine.
Sophia asked and asked and asked and finally Holber let Sophia have a go at Guitar Hero. Good ol Holber!
A special shout out to the Monoboob. leave it to holber to take sophia's ball, something so fun and innocent and find a way to thoroughly gross us out! (is he beer-tating?)
