Getting my Visa

As you will probably be able to tell, I started writing this and intended to publish it about two weeks ago, but I never got around to finishing it, so here it is now:


First off, I am supposed to be flying into New York City today, but as you have probably guessed that is not happening due to a slight disturbance there (Hurricane Irene for those of you who didn't guess). This kind of screwed up my day.
Anyway, yesterday (8/28) was supposed to be my last day in Colorado for the next year and I had it beautifully planned out. I went up to Breckenridge with my family to watch Stage 5 of the inaugural USA Pro Cycling Challenge. I'm a big cycling fan so this was set up to be a perfect ending to my summer. I just got a new camera so I was going to test it out on the cyclers speeding by at 50 kilometers per hour. I got set up right on the course and right next to the staging area. I had to wait about fifteen minutes for the riders to start coming by, but it was easily worth the wait. My parents left me after the peloton went by to go watch the podium ceremonies, but I stayed for a couple more groups before taking a short walk over to the staging area. This was probably the best part of the day because it allowed me to get so close to the riders. By the end of the time I spent here, I had taken over 450 photos, and, as you might expect, I got a couple of good ones, including shots of Colombian Rafael Infantino, Canadian Francois Parisien, and Americans Dave Zabriskie and Tom Danielson. Unfortunately, I also missed a couple of good shots, including close-up shots of American George Hincapie and Italian rider (and stage winner) Elia Viviani.

Anyway, the main purpose I'm writing this post is to tell you about the visa process. For me, it was very difficult. For others, it wasn't. I was unlucky in that  Colorado is in the jurisdiction of the Spanish consulate in Los Angeles. This happens to be probably the strictest and busiest of the Spanish consulates in the United States. My Dad and I had to fly out to LA in order to have a 10-minute in person "interview". My dad had the brilliant idea that we should get there early to show my "eagerness to get my visa and go to Spain", so we got there at 9:45 for my 10:10 appointment. Of course, the little fact dad overlooked was that they are Spanish. In other words, we waited over an hour for my ten-minute appointment (which, by the way, was me giving the guy behind the counter all of my forms). Then we had to wait roughly another hour so that he could hand them back to us and give us our confirmation slip. Then we went straight to the airport and headed home.
Now, the turnaround time on the visa was supposed to be 60 days, which would have been about a month too late for me. Amazingly, I got mine back in ten days, which was great, except there was a slight problem - they misspelled my name. It then took a couple of days for my Dad to get ahold of the consulate, who then said it wouldn't be a problem (and in hindsight they were probably correct) but we sent it to them anyway to correct. Luckily, they had it back before I had to leave (only just though).
Anyway, the point of the story is that the L.A. consulate sucks. I talked to some of the other AFS kids who went to different consulates and they had no problems. Whereas I had my twelve distinct things to turn in, including an FBI background check (which required me to get fingerprinted) that required an apostille from the State Department, some of them only had a couple of forms to turn in and didn't need a background check. So, don't go to the Spanish Consulate in Los Angeles if you can avoid it.