Because Visa, Part 1

In Which, We Gain the Ability to Stay Here Legally

Which is always a good thing, no?

So these past two weeks have truly been a blur. It's been travel, LOTS of work, more travel, planning our trip back home for Will and Amanda's wedding, more work and finally - attaining our visas.

I wish I had taken more pictures along the way, but I guess you'll have to live with what I've got.

So everybody who enters Ecuador gets a free, 90-day tourist visa called the T-3. It stops when you leave and starts again whenever you re-enter the country, and you're allowed one per year.

T-3 Visa (it's just a stamp, really)

Since we want to stay here in Ecaudor for at least a year, figuring out which visa to get was a pretty big deal. I've written about it in a couple other posts (here and here) so I won't bore you with the backstory.

We decided to get the student visa, which is called the 12-5, and it is in the non-immigrant class of visas. We decided on the student visa for a few reasons. 1) It's one of the cheapest ones out there; 2) It's renewable, which means that in six months, we can apply to renew it for another six months, and we can do this for up to two years; 3) John was wanting to take Spanish classes anyway, so this was the perfect two-birds-one-stone strategy.

John's motto these days

Our T-3 visa was set to expire on June 8, so we decided to get the student visa process rolling in the middle of May or so. I had found a school in Quito that does distance lessons via Skype that would be able to sponsor us for the visa.

Now, many people have asked why we didn't find a program here in Ambato. The answer - we tried. There are several universities here and I inquired at all of them, but none of them had a Spanish program. We heard that the government has recently been making changes in the requirements for university programs, so a lot of language programs actually lost their ability to sponsor students, hence our reason for going to Quito.

John is learning through Simon Bolivar Spanish School. They're really wonderful to deal with and, so far, he has really enjoyed his lessons. We both would have preferred him to be in a classroom setting so he could learn alongside other people, but I think this is a great alternative.

So on Monday, May 25, we hopped on the bus to Quito. It's about a 3 hour trip from Terminal Terrestre in Ambato to Terminal Quitumbe in Quito. It should only be about 2-2.5 hours with the new direct-link highway, but the buses still go through Latacunga and Salcedo, towns just off the highway, to pick up and drop people off. So 3 hours it is.

At least the views are typically amazing...

We had an appointment with an advisor at Simon Bolivar, German, at 3pm. We decided to get to Quito in the morning to hand in all of our paperwork so that everything would be ready to go at 3.

Breakfast while we were waiting
for the 3pm meeting

What paperwork, you ask? Well. Yet another benefit of the student visa is the relative ease of getting the paperwork required. We had to have a certified copy of our marriage certificate, and it had to be apostilled, and it had to be within 6 months of applying for the visa. Just in case you were wondering, an apostille is like a notarization for your notarized papers. You have to get it from the secretary of state, which means we had to make the drive to Columbia. Thankfully, that process was much easier than, say, getting Jethro's papers certified by the USDA.

The other thing we had to have was a translated and notarized copy of our bank statements for the past three months, and it had to show that we had at least $1500 in the bank. Thanks to our good friend Beth, who is a certified translator, we had that taken care of quite easily.

We also had to have our passports, passport-size photos, and we also had to fill out the visa application which had to be PERFECT. No mistakes. John and I both messed up and had to re-do them.

The visa application!

Once we got through all of that, the school put together the folder with the documents that were required from them. The next step was to actually apply.

This is where things got a little sticky. Our appointment with German was at 3, and when we spoke with him he told us that the ministry only takes applications in the morning. Which meant we either needed to stay overnight or plan on coming back another day. Since we hadn't made any plans for Jethro beyond that day, we decided to come back on Wednesday, two days later. German told us that we needed to be at the ministry building as early as possible, definitely no later than 8am. This meant an early wake-up call for us, since it's a 2-hour drive via car to get to Quito from Ambato.

Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores
y Movilidad Humana - they LOVE long titles

After our meeting at Simon Bolivar, we spent the next few hours exploring Quito. We had made an appointment to drive back with a private car service and meeting up with them at the correct time is a story in and of itself, but that's for another day. Suffice it to say, we made it back to Ambato around 10pm and immediately passed out.

In between all of this, I had a pretty steady level of work to try and get out at the appropriate time. I don't need internet to do my work, but I do need a connection in order to DELIVER my work. So when I have a due time of 5pm and I'm not sure if I'm going to be on a bus then or somewhere else without Wi-Fi, I've got to make sure to send it out beforehand, which meant a lot of doubling-up at night and trying to read while on the bus. The latter was highly unsuccessful, as my sisters would have no doubt told me beforehand. I've never had any luck with being able to read in vehicles, I don't know why I thought a bus would be different.

Anyway. Wednesday's return was uneventful, other than the 4:30am wake-up call we had to catch our 5:30am ride. We used the private car service again, and made it to our destination by 7:30, which is quite a feat. For those who don't know, Quito has over 2.5 million people living in it. It's roughly 18 miles long (30km) but only around 2 miles (3-4km) wide. Needless to say, getting in and around this place smack dab in the middle of rush hour is a feat in and of itself, and getting to where you need to be (in the center of the city, no less) in good time in nigh on a miracle.

Upon arrival, we realized German was already there and waiting for us, saving us a spot in line. The office actually opens at 8:30, but people line up quite a bit before then.

After some waiting, we were directed to the second floor, where we waited for about an hour and half before being seen by the visa advisor. He was very nice, checked all our papers, asked a few questions, then accepted our applications and instructed us on what to do next.

We had to go downstairs, pay for the visa applications with the slips of paper he was giving us, and then, when we received the receipts, we were to bring them back up to him. No fuss, no muss.

So we went and did that, and then he told us that we would receive an email in roughly a week to tell us when the visas would be ready.

At that point, we were basically done. We said thank you and goodbye to German, then we took off in search of some breakfast.

We found this on the way..

No filter...seriously

Not sure of its name, but it was beautiful, and the sun was hitting it at just the right angle for some great pictures.

So we found breakfast and finally ate. We had a minor payment snafu which required us to briefly go back to the ministry, but we cleared that up very quickly, and from there, we headed to the local transport of choice (Ecovia) to take us to the bus terminal to catch a bus back to Ambato. We made it home right at 3pm and, again, utterly crashed. Public transportation can be exhausting and draining, especially when you're working on very few hours of sleep, which I was, due to work.

One of the Ecovia stops

Either way, we spent the rest of the day just relaxing and getting back into the regular groove of things. John's birthday was the next day, and he wanted to just chill all day, so that's what we did. We got a late breakfast, took the dog on a walk, spent the day watching movies, ordered pizza for dinner, and spent the rest of the evening just chilling. All in all, we were both happy to spend the day doing next to nothing, and it was a great way to recharge our batteries.

John enjoying his birthday cigar!

So stay tuned for our third (and FINAL) trip to Quito to receive our visas. Another 4:30am wake-up call and more waiting, hurrah! All's well that ends well though. Now you know the ending of the next post, but I still expect you to read it ;)