Una tasa baratilla

^ My weinerfinger. That was at Juana's birthday party.

I went to the Oficina de Extranjeros today because fuck, man, I applied for my student card (residency) back in October, and I was supposed to have received it within two months. It's been four months already. Last week I went to the comisaría to ask about my application like they told me to do the last time I went to the Oficina de Extranjeros, and they told me to go to the Oficina de Extranjeros instead. So, Thi and I spent our morning there trying to get some info. After waiting on three lines and having fun discussions about all of the other extranjeros and their ethnicities, we finally talked to someone who worked there. Amazingly, they solved our problem within twenty minutes. God knows what they had been doing the past four months, yo. Spanish bureaucracy be crazy.

As they explained what we had to do next, they handed Thi and I a form to pay a tasa. "Um, ya pagué una tasa cuando fui a la comisaría," I say. "No pasa nada, esta tasa es baratilla," the guy explains nicely. "Cuánto es?" "Muy barato, 5.59€." "Pero de esa cantidad era la tasa que ya pagué." So he looks at my receipt and says, "Mira eso. Sí que son iguales. Bueno, de todas maneras también tienes que pagar esta tasa." So now I have to go to the bank and pay this fee before they can fingerprint me for my student card. Yup, you can't pay it there; of course, you have to go to the bank. At what time did I finally get this figured out? 2:20PM. At what time do banks close in Spain? Oh yeah, 2:15PM. Fuck. Now I have to wait until my next day off, Monday, to take care of this.

To celebrate our one-step advance in four months, we treated ourselves to some cheap Malagueta Chinese food. Mmm, 5€ menú.