I wanted to share very exciting news with you: after 7 months, countless trips back and forth to Quito to two different visa offices and the civil registry, document translation and notarization, stamps from the Ecuadorian consulate in Boston, official documents sent from the States (thank you, Mom for helping me!) and a new passport I am finally a legal resident of Ecuador!
It all started back when Xavi and I got married in a civil ceremony back on January 10th to start the paperwork before my volunteer visa expired. We thought that it would take a couple of months but certainly by the time we went to the States in March, I would have my visa and resident ID card... little did we know that it would take until late July!
At every step of the way, we had to scramble to get paperwork together - the civil wedding, the residency visa application, and the application for my resident ID card. The visa application was by far the most complicated and longest part of the process, official documents in English had to be apostilled by the State of MA, translated by an official translator and notarized, we each were interviewed separately to ensure that we were really a couple (and that I wasn't just marrying him for the papers!), and finally when I went to pick up my visa in late June, they decided that I needed a new US passport because mine was going to expire soon.
Needless to say this process took an enormous amount of patience on both of our parts, which sometimes I did not have. For example, they wanted copies of everything, we would think our paperwork was complete and they would request one more document (notarized, of course), and I was always waiting, sometimes up to 4 hours for my turn to hand in paperwork (only to be told that I was still missing something or needed to make a copy or that it was too late and I had to return the next day!).
The Ecuadorian bureaucracy was a source of culture shock for me, I couldn't understand the logic behind much of what was asked of me and was often angry and frustrated (for example: why did I have to go outside to a copy shop to make a copy of a document that they had just given me, for their records!!??). In the end, however, everything turned out fine, I got my residency visa and ID card and will never have to do it again. Also, the employees at the different offices were remarkably patient and kind, even if they couldn't bend the rules for me, they always treated me professionally and politely.
To my friends in Ecuador who are going through the visa process, you can do it!
