Upon entrance into Israel, I was given a three-month visitor visa, like all tourists. Since my program lasts five months, today our group was scheduled to meet at Ministry of the Interior Municipal Building to have our visas extended. On the Oranim website, it states that the actions for extending our visas will be taken care of by Oranim themselves, without any trouble on our part. Like so many situations, it’s not what it seems.
Firstly, I had to get two passport photos for my visa extension. There are tons of places to do this, but I procrastinated until Friday before Shabbat to head to the photo booth in Migdal Opera. It’s really a photo booth…in the middle of a food court. I only had a 20 shekel bill, and needed coins, so I went to Burger Ranch to get change. LO. Aroma? LO. Tower Records? LO. The place that changes international bills??? LO. Thank you, tiny convenience store, for being so kind to offer me change without buying anything! I put my money in the machine…and it spit it right out. Maybe he gave me fraudulent coins! Next, I tried a copy/print/internet café place by our house. I asked if they did passport photos, he said yes…and sure enough he pulled a piece of white poster board out, sat me in a chair and took my picture. Quite ghetto. He ended up ripping me off, but hey I got my pictures on time.
This morning, at 9:15am, I took the 63 Dan bus to the Azrieli Center. After having my backpack searched twice, we entered the office to extend our visas. The room was filled with people from all over…Russians, Vietnamese, Hispanic, Australian, Pilipino, American, etc. “Take a number.” 465….they were on 408 at the moment we arrived. After standing around like idiots for a few minutes, and a woman telling our coordinator we were going about the process wrong, he let us go downstairs to eat breakfast and be out of the crowd for awhile. When I came back upstairs at 11am, they were on 435. My antsy groupmates went to the mall in the building across the street, but I decided to HOPEFULLY get some “work” done and watch one of the Israeli films for Omanoot that are loaded on my computer. As a sat in the hallway watching “Joy,” the security guards came up next to me to ask what kind of computer I have. "Ahhh Toshiba! Ze tov meod!" They argued about what I was watching, then I told them it was a seret Israeli (Israeli film). They were shocked, laughed a bit, and peeked over to read the title. After asking me if it was a new film, I’m PRETTY sure the security guard told me he had lots of new movies at his house, and I should come over to watch with him since I like them so much. Umm no thanks? Nice offer, though. Everyone in the room was at a breaking point…they’d all been waiting just as long, if not longer. We even met an 18-year old Aussie needing a two-year visa for the army, who was sent away, after waiting, because he lives in a different city right now ! At 1pm, I had FINALLY given all my information to the desk…and at 1:45pm, I got my visa and passport back. Parents, I believe you are now in the Israeli database…don’t ask me why they needed to know your birthdays!
Long story short…Getting your visa extended is equally as annoying as the DMV.
Hebrew phrases for today's post:
Anashim: people
Safah: language
B'toocha: I'm sure
Yisraelim anashim meyuchdim...: Israelis are special people
...Ani lo yodaat eem ze tov o ra: I don't know if that's good or bad ;)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment