The Garda

Okay, so since we are studying here for more than 90 days (which really I am not, but I said I was staying for 3 months at the airport, otherwise I would not have had to do this whole situation) you have to register with the police to see if they will grant you permission to remain within the country. This is not a privilege, it is a right, therefore they take it extremely seriously!

So, we start our journey to the Garda (their police) last Friday. We leave around 1:50ish and head on our way to a part of town that we had yet to travel through. We stop at a convenience store and make sure we headed in the right direction, only to find out that if we walked like 5 feet past the corner, we would have seen the building we need to go to. Anywho, we get there at 2:20pm, wait in the line for roughly10 minutes and then the lady behind the counter sticks her head out to tells us to leave because we are wasting our time standing in line because they will not make it to us by 4:00pm, when they close, ugh! So we leave and make the long journey up the hill home!

We head back out at 9:00am on Monday morning, since the receptionist told us they open at 9:45am ( it really is 9:30), hoping to be the first people in line. When we got there, it was wrapped further around the little circular room you must wait in! So we sit down and start talking. The first hour went by fast. We tried figuring out how to use our cellphones the second hour, so that was entertaining, but when it came to the 3rd hour, we were very impatient. Turns out that Ireland, and I think the rest of Europe, have to take their lunch break all at the same time. So when we were only 3 people back from getting our paperwork done, they closed shop for their 2 hour lunch, so inefficient!!

So we took shifts to go grab food from across the street, played with the cutest baby ever who had a laugh that sounded like she was hiccuping, and slammed a solid game of War before they returned from their break. Roughly 30 minutes later, we get up to the desk and get our paperwork going. Now I must say now that I am extremely happy that we get reimbursed for this 150 euro process because if not, I would be strangling the guy at the airport!!  So apparently the guy at the airport, although extremely nice and actually has family that lives in Legacy Ridge (a subdivision like 10 minutes away from my house), does not know his days. If he would have wrote 1/1/2011 instead of 1/1/2010 and stamped 15 Sept 2011 instead of 15 Aug 2011, I would have been able to stay in the country without waiting in line, nor paying the fee.

Summary:

2 days, 8 hours and 150 euros later, I am officially a-okay to stay in Ireland until the end of the semester!!

Gotta Love the Irish.... Slàinte!