Time for an update!

(taken from johncoulter.net)

Progress has been made!!  Since I am now in the US of A, Pollito has to do most of the paperwork.  Granted, it is all his paperwork that needs to be done.

He has made great strides.  He has finally gotten the process started to get his police records from Spain.  That was a painful process.  I'm not sure if I've outlined it here, but basically because his Spanish ID is expired (duh), he has to do the entire process by snail mail.  We were trying to use legal representatives for a while, but that ended up not working, and we were trying to use some international government legalization process, but that didn't work either.  So after months of (mis)information gathering, Pollito finally had to go to the Spanish Embassy(which has weird rules on getting an appointment), got his papers legalized, and then sent them off to Spain.

He had to figure out all of the correct payments to be made.  It wasn't just a payment (of less than 5 euros) to the bank.  He had to do the currency exchange, and then pay a fee to transfer the money (remember, less than 5 euros), to the Spanish Bank (which seemingly exists in Peru, but even though it uses the same name, its not affiliated), and he had to pay a fee for the Spanish bank to accept the money.  All of it had to be done in dollars and in euros, so it had to be on the correct exchange rate.  You may wonder why he couldn't make the payment in the Spanish Embassy.  Thats because he can't use the Embassy for anything besides legalizing the forms, because his Spanish ID is expired.  So, he over paid the banks to account for changing exchange rates and changing fee rates.  Probably a grand total of close to 40 euros in fees to pay a 3euro payment to actually get the police record.

But! Its in the mail to Spain, who should receive it next week, and then they print out a form and send it back.  Easy, right?  I'm just not 100% behind the Peruvian postal system.  Things seems to get delayed. A box my friend sent my with syrup got delayed about two months.  On the other hand, a package from HK, arrived within two weeks.  So I guess you never know.  But with important papers, I'd rather know for sure.

Apart from sending in the Spanish papers, Pollito also had his medical exam today, and will get his results back next week.  They have to check and make sure he doesn't have some weird Peruvian disease before they let him into the States.  Seems valid....

And thats all!  All updated.  The interview is getting cloooosssseeeeeee.  All our papers should be in by the end of May!!