Immigration

Every January that we are here in Norway, Avery and I have to make the trek downtown to the Police Station and deal with getting our Visa's renewed. A harrowing stress filled process that I was not looking forward to. I have been emailing people at UDI (Norwegian Immigration) and at the Police Station to try to figure out what all we needed to turn in this year since the website is entirely too vague. Jeff is set, his Visa does not expire until the end of 2012 but for some reason, Ave and I have to renew ours each year. Maybe the don't believe Avery is Jeff's child or maybe they think we'll get a divorce, who knows, but it is a pain in my ass.

When we came last February we had to report to UDI at the police station within 7 days of our arrival in Norway. So the Monday after we arrived, still jet lagged we took the 5:30 a.m. bus downtown. Luckily my Mom was in tow since we had to stand for two hours in a vestibule outside the doors of the police station before we could even get in to take a number. Luckily we arrived so early since by time the doors opened there were at least 100 immigrants waiting in line. I think we were like #15. Once we got our number we had to wait another hour until immigration opened and then continue to wait until they called our number.

After such a crappy experience at Immigration the first time, I was completely set for the same experience this time. We decided to go on a Tuesday, thinking the weekend rush would go on Monday, we also decided to just show up at 8 am and if we had to wait longer so be it. To our astonishment we got there a little after 8 and were only # 10 in line!! We were out of Immigration by 9:30. It was amazing how different of an experience it was. Everything is chance, some days are just as packed and crazy like our first trip and other days are slow, this time the Gods smiled upon us. All our paperwork got turned in they took more copies of our passports (they have like six of these now) and new applications, so now we just have to wait for the decision at which point we will have to go again to UDI to get the Visa's in our passport. Fun stuff but I've learned that if you go with no expectations and go prepared with toys, food, juice and an ipod it is not that bad. Ah the joys of being an immigrant!