I Should Have Known

What should have been a 30 minute appointment ended up taking me the whole morning. 2 1/2 hours to be exact. I should have known.

I´ve lived in Spain long enough to realize that things here, especially when it comes to bureacracy, take forever. Yet today, for whatever reason, I was very much in an ¨American¨ frame of mind. I left promptly from my apartment at 7.30 to arrive exactly on time at the U.S. Embassy of Madrid for my 8 o´clock appointment. What was supposed to be a half an hour visit for adding additional pages to my passport took the U.S. Embassy until 10.30.

I ended up missing two of my morning classes and feeling angry at myself that 1) I had traveled so much and needed more pages to get me through these next few months of travels while I´m still living here, and 2) for thinking that I would be done with my appointment by 8.30, getting to work on time. Obviously I was expecting that the U.S. Embassy would have American employees that would actually be ... punctual. A word I haven´t said in months, a word that has, for the moment at least, left my own vocabulary.

But, al final, all worked out. I have my passport with extra pages, school understood, and no pasa nada.