Monday July 14, 2003
What a day!
Fran & I left the apartment together this morning at about 8:30. We hopped into a taxi (a/c didn’t work too well and it was warm out) and headed down to the Foreign Affairs Office. We had given them our passports two weeks ago to get a Resident Visa. They had promised that our passports would be back with our new Resident Visas at 9am. We arrived and guess what? The passports had not yet arrived. Fran was STEAMED! I thought – oh boy, here we go again. The typical Chinese deal; they tell you what they think you want to hear wether or not it is reality. They had told us 9am knowing that it would be near impossible to actually do it. We were told to return at 3pm. After calling the supervisor and getting the same story we reluctantly left.
Fran came with me to the office and she shredded papers while I downloaded email and started my regular Monday morning routine. When she finished we agreed to meet back at the Foreign Affairs Office at 3pm. I finished the 925 funds project and emailed it to Hal before going to Jow Fu Buffet (Chinese fast food) for lunch.
At 3 we met as agreed and found that in fact our passports had arrived! Now we could apply for our ARCs and pay our taxes!
From there we rushed back to the office to give our passports to Lucy so that she could figure our income taxes – we must pay before departure since we will not return before the new calendar year. After Lucy finished figuring the taxes and Gloria gave us the $$$ to pay them, Fran and I were off to the Police office where we needed to apply for our ARC (it will take at least two days and we must have it before we can leave on Friday morning). They checked the way we had filled out the paperwork, took our $2,000NT, told us we would have to bring two additional photographs, and said that the Alien Resident Certificate would be ready for pick-up on Thursday morning! (a day to spare).
We left there in a hurry to get to the tax office before it closed. We arrived before closing and the girl checked our forms and told us to pay at the next section. She looked over and saw that it was closed and told us that we would have to come back tomorrow to pay them. Bummer!
The Bad News is that it takes so much energy to do all this and that NOBODY seems to know for sure what the procedure is or how long it will take or what the hours of operation for the various departments are, etc, etc.
The Good News is that it looks like we will complete jumping through all of the hoops just in the nick of time and that we will not be delayed returning to the USA! ! ! !
