David-Cultrual Immersion CP9

6/1/2012
Miami Florida

After the previous weeks zombie attack one cannot help but be apprehensive about traveling to Miami.  It did not help that everyone that knew of our plans to visit the consulate made such a comment.  After this experience I can truly say that I think I know a little bit about how the CIES students feel when coming here to the United States.  So here is the scene:  We drove down to Cocoa beach where Kati's family lives on Wednesday night.  Because we have  baby and did not want to interrupt her sleep cycle we decided that it would be best to travel at night.  The only unfortunate thing about traveling at night is that it messes with your sleep cycle, and my wife cannot drive at night because she falls asleep.  I had worked the early shift Wednesday because my coworker was out on a personal day and I had to pick up the shift which requires me to get up about 5 am.  We did not leave Tallahassee till 10:30pm after checking and checking to make sure that we had everything we needed because the last thing we needed was a wasted trip with no visas.

We arrived in Cocoa beach about 3:30am EST  and were able to get into the house and to bed by about 4am.  Kati's mom is a RN and because of this she is cursed with waking up everyday at 5am or earlier whether she wants to or not, and  because one of our dogs was misbehaving I didn't get much sleep and found myself sipping coffee about about 6am.  It was Kati's parents birthday (yes they have the same one 7 years apart) we spent the day with them and I was unable to catch up on any sleep.  I attended class virtually that day so as not to have an absence and because I didn't want to miss the Generals entertaining class.  After class we went out to a nice dinner and we packed for Miami afterwards.  Our plan was to travel to Miami get a hotel and then wake up early to go to the consulate.  If only everything went as planned.  I was at this point 36+ hours without sleep, when we went over our checklist again and realized that we had not filled out a huge portion of paperwork needed to acquire the visas.  Needless to say we were not leaving for Miami till we had completed all the paperwork because we had access to a printer and internet, which we might not have in the morning in Miami.   Of course I had to fix the printer first because everything was going our way.  The clock continued to tick away as we busily filled and printed everything that we needed for the following day.  We finally finished at about 3:30am with a laundry list of things to do in the morning including finding a notary, additional passport photos for baby and I, employment history from my HR office, get prepaid envelopes, and get a bank statement.  Not to mention we hadn't even left for Miami yet but at least we were in good spirits.

Now close to the 48 hour mark without sleep and my wife not able to drive at night we set off for Miami at 3:45 in the morning.  With baby behaving so well and at this point sleeping and Kati catching up on some much needed rest we headed for Miami.  At this point I cannot just stop and sleep our visa appointments were at 9:30, 10, and 10:30am respectively and I knew if I dared take a nap at this point I would not wake up until we had missed our appointments altogether.  Around 6:30am I couldn't take it anymore so I stopped for some Starbucks and drank about 11 dollars worth of coffee products myself.  Kati grabbed some as well and we were off again.



 We arrived at a CVS in downtown Miami (Brickell district) at 7:30am.  Now that I have taken great length to tell you all the circumstances surrounding our arrival in Miami and how I have been throughly sleep deprived until this point let the cultural experiences begin.

We first stopped at the CVS for additional passport photos for baby and I.  We already had our passports and one extra photo each but we needed two for the visas.  Kati grabbed the baby and headed into the store, while I locked the car and found the thumb drive with the digital image of the baby's passport photo.  On my way in a homeless person approached me and not speaking English.  Until this point we had not had any contact with anyone in Miami.  I am not sure what he said from my very limited spanish but because of my schema I believed him to be homeless.  I don't mind helping someone out so I replied that I don't speak Spanish in Spanish (which is one of the few phrases that I know in Spanish).  When I said this he didn't say anything else he just walked away and I felt pretty bad because as I said I will help someone in need if given the opportunity.  Though with my experience with homeless people in America it has been such.  If they ask for a bus ticket I say to where and offer to buy them a ticket, and if they ask for money for a meal I offer to take them out to lunch but sadly most just walk away with my invitation hanging.  This leads me to believe that they just wanted money..??  I have had only one person out of dozens take me up on my offer...  After the pan handling I walked in to CVS to join my family and they were sitting by the photo booth.  I asked the lady at the front counter if she could call somebody to the photo department and she must of understood me because she made  call on the intercom in Spanish but she did not reply to me at all.  So there I was hoping that she had done what I asked.  At this point I really wished that I knew a bit of Spanish because I had a deadline and felt helpless because I could not find a person that would speak to me in English.  I joined my family at the photo counter and waited........  Finally after 10 minutes went by a manager came by and she asked me something that I did not understand.  I told her that I did not speak Spanish and to my pleasant surprise she then told me that the photo tech would not be there for another 20 min in English.  By now we were approaching 8am and I did not want to wait but we had no choice, we were dead in the water.  Only about 10 minutes later a lady came in and walked behind the photo desk and we were able to point to the screen on the instant photo machine (required a password for the passport section) and she knew what we wanted.  She said that the machine had to warm up and that it would be 15 to 30 minutes before they were ready.  We said that we would come back and left.

My wife and I decided to split up at this point so that we could cover more ground  I was going to go to a Kinkos so that I could get my HR stuff faxed to me and she was going to run back to the CVS to get the photos.  At least two things were now being done at once.  I called my HR and they told me the webpage that I could get the information that I needed to.  I rented a computer from the shop, again the lady at the counter did again not speak any English so I simply pointed to the computer and used makeshift sign language to tell her what I was wanting to do.  She activated the computer which was about 70 cents a min!!!!!!  After about 2 minutes I realized that I was unable to get to where I needed to go.  So I went to the lady and I don't know how I explained this but perhaps I am gifted at pictionary and somehow got across that I could not get to where I needed to go.  I called my HR person back and pleaded with her to fax it from the new fax machine that I had setup for her.  She reluctantly agreed to fax it.  While I waited for the fax to come in I walked around the store and to my surprise found something that would help me with my English teaching!!!!  I found a lamented folder of parts of speech for English with examples!!!! Parts of speech such as uncountable nouns and other things is one of my weakest subjects when explaining English.  I plucked it up and purchased it along with the fax that finally came through.  I was then able to find a notary and get a letter notarized that I would not pursue illegal employment in France while I was there.  Kati and baby picked me up and dropped me off (now that they had the pictures) at the bank to get a statement.  After that we parked at the post office to get our readdressed envelopes to send our passports back from the consulate.  This was an interesting experience because the post office opened right at 9am 30 minutes before our appointments.  Did I mention that it was raining this entire time??????  It actually took the post office clerk a while to understand what I needed.  She was the only native English speaker that I would meet the entire day but while she was helping me she was being yelled at in Spanish.  We parked in the only place we could find and it was a two hour limit so we took a gamble and made a mad dash for the consulate.  We arrived at the consulate soaked at 9:25 by what had seemed like an act of God.

Now we were dealing with people that were French natives.  Though they spoke English they clearly preferred to speak French and that was ok  because I am learning some French and my wife is fluent.  We sat in the room and waited our turn, while I was coughing up a storm.  I was sick to make matters worse, but we were determined to get through this.  Finally after waiting for 45 minutes we all got called up at the same time  as one appointment and we were able to conduct our meeting in French and English which was a fun experience.  Rest was not yet destined for us because we needed to get back to her parents house to avoid spending extra funds on a hotel.  I retrieved the car which was lucky because it had been about 2 hours and 15 minutes and the car next to us was being booted.  The guys looked real disappointed that they were going to miss out on my 80 bucks to remove the boot.  Parking for 2 hours was 17 bucks and I was completely floored but there was nothing that I could do about it.  The guy that cashed me out spoke only Spanish and it was the first time that I can remember that I was called Papi by a guy (I am not sure if this is an endearing term but I do not want to imagine).  Before leaving we used our app that finds Vegan restaurants (yes they have an app for that)  and dined at a local place that was as delicious as it was expensive.

On our way back we hit the same Starbucks as on the way in and made our way to Cocoa.  Kati volunteered to drive but only lasted about 30 minutes before she felt as though she would fall to sleep at the wheel so I took over and drove the rest of the way home.  We left Miami with an experience, one where we were tired and desperate to be able to communicate with people to find our way around.  I can only image how our CIES students feel if this happened in my home state.