Getting to this point: Jan – Aug 2023 in a nutshell

Our process arriving at the decision to go to Spain for a year was a long and winding process, and the preparations once we decided have felt even longer and windier, through many many rolls of red tape and other administrative hoops, but since we’re just now jumping into telling about it, we’ll spare the longness and windiness of everything up to this point and give a basic overview. (Maybe someday we’ll give a play by play of all the riveting administrative details.)

I am signed up for an internship sponsored by the Spanish government called NALCAP: North American Language and Culture Assistant Program, which involves native English speakers TA-ing in English classes at the Spanish public schools, serving as examples of native English speaking as well as cultural ambassadors of their country of origin. The position is known as auxiliares de conversación (conversation assistant), or just auxiliares or auxes.

I applied in February, and in April I received my acceptance and assignment: Madrid! at one of their secondary schools (7th-10th).

Since then it was paperwork this, appointment that, phone call here, email there, and on and on, checking and double-checking I’m getting what we need and gradually pulling everything together for the *lengthy* visa application requirements on the DC Spanish embassy website. (And in the meantime, we are also doing everything else with life –the kids’ school and extracurricular and friend activities and church activities, our jobs, Jacob as an immigration attorney and me as a very part-time Spanish interpreter at Henrico schools, plus fixing and cleaning up our house for sale.)

My program start date is October 1, but school starts September 6, and since our whole family is going, we wrote on our application August 25 as our intended date of entry, hoping to have enough time to get settled and get the kids enrolled in school before classes begin.

One detail I did want to share about the administrative process is: miraculously, for one document we needed from the US Department of State, their website said it was a 12 week processing time which would have put us into September before we could barely submit the application, but my mom connected me with their friend who works for the State Department, and he helped get our paper for us in a matter of days.

In June the consulate starting outsourcing their visa processing to a different company, BLS International, and their website specified that the applications are mail-in only, and that the processing should take about a month. By the first week of July I had all the paperwork together, 6 packets for our 6 applications all put into one Priority Mail box weighing 6 pounds. On July 6 I dropped the package in the mail, and on July 10 I got confirmation that it arrived at BLS reception, so we assumed we’d be getting the visas around the 2nd week of August.

We made our August plans based on that assumption.

We planned our move-out date for August 12, at which point we would road trip across the country to visit grandparents and other family, then leave the car at my parents’ house in Utah and fly from Salt Lake to Madrid. On the house sale contract we’d set our move-out date as August 19, to be on the safe side and give ourselves an extra week.

Of course, we knew that there could be longer delays and that we were making a calculated risk of having to be out of the house while still not being able to fly to Spain, but we decided to be optimistic.

On August 4 a couple good friends hosted a goodbye party, which we had waffled about doing but they graciously pulled it together at the last minute. They even brought a sword from Spain to cut the cake 🙂

August 12 rolls around and our visas haven’t arrived and we haven’t even gotten the tracking number indicating that processing has begun. We are looking at the BLS website the next day and notice some wording has changed: they added a parenthetical statement…we will get our visas a month after processing begins (not a month after we send the application in). And ours hadn’t even begun.

So the next Wednesday, which was last Wednesday, we thought we’d go up to the BLS office in DC and see what could be done in person.

Eventually we were led upstairs and allowed into the office, and the nice man said that since my start date was October 1, our applications were in their “October pile” (!) and that the office was currently working on the September pile, and that there wasn’t anything he could do to expedite it, but after I explained we were trying to get there early enough so our kids could be there for the start of school, he said he’d put ours at the top of the October pile.

*Sigh.

I didn’t want to be pushy or insistent, and I know he’s doing his best and he’s likely limited in his influence. But…*sigh.

We do still feel very positive and grateful about that visit, though, because a) we confirmed that they do in fact have our applications (phew!) and b) he did help in what way he could to move our process along.

Also, this was part of the calculated risk; this is what we chose; this is part of the adventure. So we’re just rolling with it.

This morning I finally got the text with the tracking number saying our processing has begun! Later this morning, the same guy from last week called saying that my application was missing, which freaked us out (!), but a couple minutes later he called back saying never mind, it’s all together and being processed.

So, we did have to move out over the weekend and we’ve been staying at our friends’ house in Goochland, and we decided to book an air bnb in Northern Virginia for three weeks starting tomorrow, hoping and praying that our visas somehow get processed very quickly and we don’t have to stay for that long, but knowing that we may well have to stay even longer than that. Calculated risk, choosing to be optimistic.

And that’s where we’re at.

The love and support from friends and family has been overwhelmingly abundant, and we are so deeply grateful.

And of course, we’re always grateful for divine support every step of the way. On that subject, I am approaching this adventure with a degree of curiosity and optimism–How will things turn out? How will I see God’s hand? How will I change, or who will I become because of this? I look forward to finding evidence of divine support through every endeavor–not just whatever circumstances befall us that are out of our control, but also the challenges and opportunities we deliberately choose.