We can't believe that we are already here and that our Argentine adventure is upon us!
We left England on one of those most glorious of February days in which the promise of spring is tangible. There were crocuses and even daffodils opening their faces to the beautiful and very welcome rays of spring sunshine. The breeze was gentle and the temperature a very mild 12 degrees centigrade.
The flight seemed long, but we finally made it to a day which wasn't nearly as hot as I was dreading. Knowing that temperatures in BA often end up in the high 30s, a humid, but relatively cool, 22 degrees was very welcome.
One of the deputy heads of our new school came to the airport to meet us and another Brit called Thomas (who will be teaching science at the school). Rob greeted us and lead us outside where we waited about 5 min for a dilapidated minibus to collect and transport us to our new accommodation. The first thing he said when he saw the car seat was 'you won't be needing that here'!!! So Sophie went into the minibus and did not sit in her car seat for the ride. She did not even wear a seat belt as the minibus obviously did not come equipped with such a new-fangled idea ;)
On the way to our new homes we passed through the school to collect Soledad who was given the job of making sure all the new staff settle in well. Soledad is a very lovely lady of around my age who used to go to the school as a student and now works for the college in the admin office. She took us to our new flat and showed us everything we needed to settle in (including a fridge full of the essentials). She has helped us with our health screens that we had to do, taken us on a tour of the school, translated for us and is even in the process of helping us get wi-fi set up in our flat. I don't know what we would do without her!
But every one here has been very friendly. Jo and Simon have been in contact with us for ages, helping us plan what to bring and pack and giving us good advice from a family who have recently made the move. Michaela, Chris and Thomas are new this year as well and it has been very nice to be able to share this new adventure with others. Peggy, Melanie and Ian we have met a couple times for lunches as well which has been lovely. It seems as if there is a supportive expat community here which makes Stephen and I very glad that we will be able to have at least some friendly faces around in the first few months until we get to know the language and customs a bit better.
Our flat has 2 bedrooms and is not large. It is modern though with a comfortable sofa, nice furniture and lots of storage space (which is a nice change from a British flat). There is a nice balcony off the living room with lovely views of the river. It is strange to be so high up as neither of us has lived in a tower block before. The benefit of it though is that you have a bird's eye view of the area which is very nice. The kitchen is tiny but it also has a small balcony off of it with a washing machine, sink and some storage space. There is one bathroom with rather amazing good water pressure in the shower and one powder room near the door.
The complex of tower blocks is security guarded and very safe. Children as young as Sophie seem to have the run of the place and everyone stops and chats to and tease all the little kids. There is a little play park, a swimming pool, lawns to play games on and enough paved space that Sophie can scooter all she likes in complete safety. We are working on her right now so that when she wants to go play on her own she can ring the buzzer from downstairs, we can buzz her in and she can then get to us without us having to even leave the flat.
Jo and Simon remarked that the only way to get on here with a child is to take what we know as the good parenting guide in England and throw it our the window. Things are just so different and while there are dangers where they didn't used to be there is also a much more relaxed way of doing things. Parenthood seems to be as much a community led thing as a parental responsibility. For example, Sophie went swimming today at the pool at the school and because there were other children swimming and the lifeguard is actually the swimming instructor for the kindergarten classes she could go in swimming by herself rather than on a one-to-one ratio of parent to child like in the UK. She had such great fun and after introducing her to the lifeguard and saying what she was capable of I was free to go back to our delicious asado (bbq).
Although it is early days yet and we have yet to start our real purpose here in teaching, we are very optimistic that we will enjoy it.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Argentine Bureaucracy
During Stephen's interview process for the job in Buenos Aires and again in a leaflet sent out by the school about the reality of trading a comfortable and familiar British life for that of an expat, more than one warning was given about Argentinian Bureaucracy. Stephen and I laughed about this and and were just so excited about the whole idea of an adventure that this warning pretty much went unheeded! Both of us are quite easy-going which is a good thing as there, indeed, has been lots of strange requests we have had to deal with en-route to living here.
The first step in our process to legally work at St George's seemed straightforward enough. Scan all of our passports, birth certificates and marriage license and send them to admin at the school so they could then begin the mammoth task of applying for a work visa on our behalf from the DNM, otherwise known as the Direccion Nacional de Migraciones. That didn't seem so difficult until we learned that we then had to get all our documents ( birth certs, marriage cert, university degrees, teaching diplomas, etc, etc ) all apostilled.
Apostilled you ask? Well, the apostille is a seal affixed to a document which shows that it has been authenticated by the government. The gist of it is that any country who signs up to the Hague Convention then recognises any document which has been apostillised in its country of origin. This was okay for our British Documents as all we had to do to get them done was take them up to Milton Keynes and pay for them to be stamped. Our Kiwi documents were a bit trickier as we had to take them to the NZ Embassy in London to be notarised by a Kiwi notary and then FedExed to Wellington to be apostillised, but this was still manageable and relatively easy. The Canadian documents however, were a different story!
As Canada did not sign the Hague Convention, all Canadian documents must be authenticated by the Canadian Government and then legalised by the Consulate of the country you are sending the documents to. Apparently if you post your documents to the Canadian government it will take them 35 working days to sort out and post back to you. However, if you take the documents to them in person they will do it for free in 15 min while you wait! I was going to have to fly to Canada to get this done but my wonderful parents decided that they would spend their 36th wedding anniversary driving my documents 6 hours to Ottawa to be authenticated, then another 5 hours to Toronto to be legalised by the Argentine Consulate (as the Argentine Embassy in Ottawa won't do it!). They then FedExed the documents back to me just in time for me to scan them and send off to the school in Argentina and for them to send on to the DMN who then send them back to the Argentine Consulate in London!
I think we must have the best travelled documents in the world!
I am sure that as time goes on we will have many other examples of how Argentine Bureaucracy works... Watch this space!
The first step in our process to legally work at St George's seemed straightforward enough. Scan all of our passports, birth certificates and marriage license and send them to admin at the school so they could then begin the mammoth task of applying for a work visa on our behalf from the DNM, otherwise known as the Direccion Nacional de Migraciones. That didn't seem so difficult until we learned that we then had to get all our documents ( birth certs, marriage cert, university degrees, teaching diplomas, etc, etc ) all apostilled.
Apostilled you ask? Well, the apostille is a seal affixed to a document which shows that it has been authenticated by the government. The gist of it is that any country who signs up to the Hague Convention then recognises any document which has been apostillised in its country of origin. This was okay for our British Documents as all we had to do to get them done was take them up to Milton Keynes and pay for them to be stamped. Our Kiwi documents were a bit trickier as we had to take them to the NZ Embassy in London to be notarised by a Kiwi notary and then FedExed to Wellington to be apostillised, but this was still manageable and relatively easy. The Canadian documents however, were a different story!
As Canada did not sign the Hague Convention, all Canadian documents must be authenticated by the Canadian Government and then legalised by the Consulate of the country you are sending the documents to. Apparently if you post your documents to the Canadian government it will take them 35 working days to sort out and post back to you. However, if you take the documents to them in person they will do it for free in 15 min while you wait! I was going to have to fly to Canada to get this done but my wonderful parents decided that they would spend their 36th wedding anniversary driving my documents 6 hours to Ottawa to be authenticated, then another 5 hours to Toronto to be legalised by the Argentine Consulate (as the Argentine Embassy in Ottawa won't do it!). They then FedExed the documents back to me just in time for me to scan them and send off to the school in Argentina and for them to send on to the DMN who then send them back to the Argentine Consulate in London!
I think we must have the best travelled documents in the world!
I am sure that as time goes on we will have many other examples of how Argentine Bureaucracy works... Watch this space!
Monday, February 07, 2011
Leaving London
It has been a long time since I have posted. However, as we are beginning a new adventure, I thought that it would be an ideal time to continue our blog. I have begun another posting to shoulder the gap between the last time we posted and now (almost 2 years later!), but it is taking quite a long time to complete and I really want our blog to contain some of my feelings, emotions, hopes and dreams before we actually embark on this most exciting adventure.
Yesterday we went into London for the day. Back in October I had ordered 6 tickets for the London Eye through an accumulation of Tesco vouchers and we planned on using them to take the Taylors and the Sawyers for a pre-Christmas excursion. However, on the chosen day, there was a terrible snow storm which precluded us from journeying into London from Guildford. Trains were running, but it was touch and go whether or not they still would be when we wanted to come home. So yesterday was the designated rain check - or snow check as it were.
Lizzie and Sophie were so excited to be making the trip. We had spent the night before at the Sawyers' house and both girls were too excited to sleep much at all. The catch word all morning, and for the entire train journey, and for waiting in the queue, was 'London Eye!!!' And I don't think it disappointed in the slightest. The girls, Andrew and Maisy spent the entire trip around the wheel hooked over the railing and marvelling at the sights below.
After the Eye was a boat trip up the Thames to Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. We walked around for a while followed by pizza at Zizzi's. The kids loved the day and even though we were all desperately tired by the time we got home it was a lovely way to say good-bye to the beautiful city which has been our home for the last 8 years.
I am really excited about the move and I am really looking forward to a new adventure. BUT... There is so much that is unknown and up in the air. We know where we will be teaching and generally what we will be teaching but we have never met any of the students and never been to the school. We know that we will be living in a 2 bed flat a 5 min walk from the school but we have not seen any pictures of it or even seen what the block of flats looks like from the outside (except what you can see on Google Earth). We know that they will mostly speak English at the school but most people will speak Spanish which we don't understand. We know that Sophie will be in full time school but not who her teachers will be or even how many students will be in her class. So much to find out!
And we will find most of it out the day after tomorrow. Eek!
Yesterday we went into London for the day. Back in October I had ordered 6 tickets for the London Eye through an accumulation of Tesco vouchers and we planned on using them to take the Taylors and the Sawyers for a pre-Christmas excursion. However, on the chosen day, there was a terrible snow storm which precluded us from journeying into London from Guildford. Trains were running, but it was touch and go whether or not they still would be when we wanted to come home. So yesterday was the designated rain check - or snow check as it were.
Lizzie and Sophie were so excited to be making the trip. We had spent the night before at the Sawyers' house and both girls were too excited to sleep much at all. The catch word all morning, and for the entire train journey, and for waiting in the queue, was 'London Eye!!!' And I don't think it disappointed in the slightest. The girls, Andrew and Maisy spent the entire trip around the wheel hooked over the railing and marvelling at the sights below.
After the Eye was a boat trip up the Thames to Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. We walked around for a while followed by pizza at Zizzi's. The kids loved the day and even though we were all desperately tired by the time we got home it was a lovely way to say good-bye to the beautiful city which has been our home for the last 8 years.
I am really excited about the move and I am really looking forward to a new adventure. BUT... There is so much that is unknown and up in the air. We know where we will be teaching and generally what we will be teaching but we have never met any of the students and never been to the school. We know that we will be living in a 2 bed flat a 5 min walk from the school but we have not seen any pictures of it or even seen what the block of flats looks like from the outside (except what you can see on Google Earth). We know that they will mostly speak English at the school but most people will speak Spanish which we don't understand. We know that Sophie will be in full time school but not who her teachers will be or even how many students will be in her class. So much to find out!
And we will find most of it out the day after tomorrow. Eek!
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Florida - February 2009
Well, I am getting a bit rubbish at posting, but I thought that while I am on summer holidays I should catch up on blog entries I have missed! So here is a photo diary of what Sophie and I got up to on our yearly migration to Florida to visit our own personal snowbirds...
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Sophie's 2nd Birthday
Lucky Sophie had 3 parties for her 2nd birthday! One with family (and Grandma Kay was there!), one with Bella at the Farnham Sports Centre, and most of her close friends to dinner on the actual day. All the parties were loads of fun, and having her friends to dinner on the day was so successful that I think it will be a yearly tradition!
Visiting with Great Grandma Paddy
We went to visit Grandma at Wendy and Chris' place near Maldon. We had a lovely afternoon at the park on the harbour front.
Here are a few pics...
Here are a few pics...
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