We are now, officially, residents of Rome, Italy, at least for the next ten months. Six weeks ago, we had an appointment with the Italian Consulates office in Portland, Oregon. At that appointment, we gave them our individual Visa applications, passports, copies of bank records, health insurance information, a copy of our lease to our lovely Rome apartment and much, much more. Within 6 days, we had our Visa’s delivered to our home. 6 days! The fine print of the application said it would take 4 – 6 weeks, which is exactly what you’d expect from Italy. It was so amazingly organized! Our preparation for the appointment at the Consulates office – not as organized.
When we decided we were going to make this very adventurous move, I was hot in the middle of planning an auction for one of my children’s school. Each and every day, there were auction details to coordinate with a variety of volunteers, so I had no time to think about moving to Rome. As organized as I liked to think I was, I barely had time for my household routines, so planning a move to Rome wasn’t going to happen.
However, my husband, who really, really wanted to move to Italy, had a bit of time on his hands. So, I delegated the task of Italian coordination to him (he was a certified public accountant, CFO and CEO during his working career – he certainly knew how to dot his i’s and cross his t’s – right?!)
The auction was a lot of fun, we raised some much needed funds for our school, connected members of the community and went home with some great items. When you volunteer to co-chair an auction, the work doesn’t stop the day of the auction. There’s a financial audit that needs to happen (I happily volunteered my husband, the ex-CFO), some people who partied a little too hard needed to be reconnected to their goods, and those who throw parties wanted to know who the attendees would be, etc.
Once we had our auction duties behind us, we had to organize ourselves, and family, around all of the end of the school year activities. We had one child “graduating” from middle school and the other “graduating” from elementary school. There was an eighth-grade family brunch to prep for, family dinners to coordinate, treat baking for the fifth grade play, assemblage of the elementary school art projects, cleaning of school rooms, packing of classroom boxes...
Then, school was over! But wait, two days later, we had to hop on a plane to Rome to find our dream apartment, turn in the balance of our kids school application materials and to try to spend a bit of quality time in the city we love. In a future post, I’ll go into detail of this two-week trip.
We flew home Saturday and our appointment with the Consulate was scheduled for the following Tuesday. Now keep in mind, I’m thinking my oh-so-experienced-pencil-pusher-husband had all of the details for the Consulate under complete control. Why would I think otherwise? We go into our jet-lagged stupor and Monday, come up for air.
Monday, my husband informs me we need to have our pictures taken for our Visa applications. Okay, no problem, he’s on the job! We show up at the 1-Hour Photo place and Dreadlock Dude working behind the counter asks us which size photo we need for our Visas. Which size? Isn’t there a standard? No, different countries have different requirements. My husband tells him to just take the standard US passport size, 2-inch by 2-inch. Dreadlock Dude isn’t comfortable with that and neither am I.
I whip out my iPhone, which comes in handy in situations like this, and I find out the Italian Visa requires a 4.5 centimeter by 3.5 centimeter photo with your head occupying 60-70 percent of the photo area and the top of the head to the chin must be 3 centimeters in length. Okay… how’s that for very specific? Now, we have to do a conversion. Thankfully, Dreadlock Dude is an artist and took this task very seriously. He got out his ruler, worked magic with his camera and voila! produced perfect photos. Dreadlock Dude is a Genius!
Meanwhile, I become very suspicious. I immediately ask my husband, why were you not aware of this? I thought you were coordinating the details. Don’t worry, he assured me, this tiny detail slipped his radar, all was under control.
We wake up early Tuesday, our appointment was in the late afternoon, and we had three hours of driving time ahead of us to make it on time. Over coffee, I ask my husband if I can look over the application materials – to make sure all was complete. He gave me the blank application forms for myself and the kids. Okay, that’s all nice and well, but where are the instructions for the balance of the materials that need to be submitted? His response, um, let me look it up online. No, oh, I have it right here because I’ve had three months to gather all of the information, make photocopies and pick up documents from the safe deposit box!
No, none of that. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing was organized.
Screaming, yes, I’m screaming at him - in my head because I know screaming will do no one any good. Well, it would have done me a lot of good, but I didn’t want to create any ill will at that point. So, I hold it in for later when we can sit with a glass of wine and review – detail, by painful detail, what went wrong.
He prints the instructions and we go to work. We fill out the applications, comb through our bank files, call our health insurance company, can’t open the safe deposit box until 10 a.m., so we save that for on the way. Needless to say, it took us every minute from the time we woke up to prepare for our meeting with the Consulate. We submitted every piece of paper we needed and 6 days later, Visa’s appeared on our doorstep.
Italy is far more organized than we.
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