Would you like to know how nearly this whole deal didn't happen? Enough things went wrong for me to wonder if I was really meant to do it but, apparently, I was. It went something like this...
- The Spanish Ministry of Education thought it would be funny to make a really complicated, hard-to-use website, and then require people who aren't even native speakers of Spanish to use it. Oh, that's sure to be funny! I mean, everyone loves doing online applications when you still have to send the paper copies, right? And when there's no space to add extra notes when you need to give extra information. And when, if you accidentally upload the wrong document to a certain part, there's no way to re-start, so you have to create a whole new application. Where on the site did I manage to do that the first time, again?
Therefore, this leads to some poor woman at the Spanish Embassy in NZ getting lots of emails about how the heck to use the site. Poor woman. - Then there were those paper documents. By the time I work out the bloody website, get them all scanned and assembled, I have just over week to get them from France to NZ. So, I go to la poste (yep, known for their efficiency *ahem*) and they kindly advise me that, to ensure they arrive on time, I should use Chronopost. That means it'll cost about 60 Euros. Yes. Sixty. That's around 100 NZ dollars. But I bite the bullet and hand over the cash.
A week later, I get an email from the Embassy, saying my documents haven't arrived. I ring up Chronopost, they tell me some story about how things went to Australia when they shouldn't have, or something. The gist of it is that my documents are still about 2 days away from Wellington. Luckily for me, the Embassy was willing to wait, since they had my online application. - While I'm on holiday in Edinburgh, I check my emails, only to find one telling me that I'll have to go home to get the visa. No biggie... just pop over to the other side of the world for a 15 minute visa appointment, right? And, about 3000 euros (possibly a slight exaggeration, but anyway) and 60 hours of flying time later, I might be back in Europe with a visa.
- Much reflection (and a bit of probing the Embassy about whether there were any other options or ways to get around this) follows, then I decide to formally refuse the position. So, emails away to the Embassy, the Spanish Ministry of Education, the school I was meant to work in (with whom I'd made contact), etc.
A few days later, the Embassy got sympathetic. They thought that maybe this could be a special case. By the time I reach Italy, it's settled. Instead of me having to go back to NZ, they will just require my passport. That's do-able. - What I didn't realise was that, between times, my school had been changed. Bugger. Especially when I'd already found accommo. :( In fact, I was presented with the choice between the Madrid region, or Andalucia. I chose Andalucia. Later, my Spanish friend told me that I was clearly a woman who liked to take risks because, in Andalucia, I could get stuck in a tiny village. (Which I later did. He laughed.)
- So, I have to send my passport back to NZ. But I'm travelling. So, I have to wait until I'm back in France for a couple of months before I can send it. After telling my Chronopost tale to some friends, they added theirs. There were several. I opt not to send with Chronopost. Passport and documents (checked sooo many times before sending) arrive within about 4 days. It's amazing. I sent it from a tiny, tiny little town in the Pyrenees, too.
- Parents obtain visa for me, and all seems well. Until I decide I should plan a trip to Spain to check out accommo. I think that a week and a bit should be enough for my passport to get back to me before I go. I think wrongly. (Can I just add that, when the package arrived, it had some tape on it with Chronopost written on it?) So, I stay in France, and decide that I'll sort accommo out later.
From this point on, things start looking up. I find out there will be 3 other assistants in my town, and a fourth will work in the town next-door, but wants to live in the same town as me. She finds a flat and, before I know it, all I have to do is get all of my weighty baggage to the airport, through the Easyjet check-in, to a youth hostel in Madrid, on a bus, and then move in in La Carolina.
Phew.
Vamos...
