Navigating the system

To move to Spain, I´ll need a visa and the best choice for me is called a Non-lucrative Visa. From the name, you can see that it prohibits me from working. However, I will eventually be allowed to apply for permanent residency, as long as I follow all the rules. The benefit for Spain is clear- they get money coming into the economy without needing to give me a job, a boon in a country with relatively high unemployment.

I drink a lot of coffee while studying bureucratese, my new second language.

But the getting of the visa is not simple, and I knew that going in. Last November, I began by reading the brief instruction page on the consulate website. Then I spent several days reading all the comments on the Spain Expat page pertaining to visas, going back months and months. My friend M likened this is to a study of the Talmud - first you read the revealed words, and then consider what all the scholars have said about the topic throughout the years.  And it´s really needed. For example, what counts as proof that you have enough money? What does it mean to have a document notarized versus apostilled?* What do you do when all the Spanish consulate websites around the world go down for a week unexpectedly?**

I spent several months accumulating proof that I don´t need a job, that my FBI RAP*** sheet is clean, that I don´t have any serious diseases, and that I had a place to live when I arrived. These were translated into Spanish by a government-approved translator. I am now waiting for the last piece of paper, which I hope will arrive this week. In fact, I need it to arrive this week so that I can overnight express my application to the consulate. Because in six business days, the first of my carefully-procured documents expires and I´ll have to do that part over before submitting. 

tl,dr: To apply for a visa, you either need to be a very organized and legal-minded person, or you need to hire someone else who is. Fingers crossed that I can pull this off!

*Answer 1: Notaries verify that it is really you signing something, and the apostille verifies that the document really came from the government. Answer 2: The first takes 15 minutes to procure, and the second takes 10 weeks.
**Worry, very pointlessly.
**It turns out that´s a real thing: your Record of Arrests and Prosecutions.

Even more sights to see

I am back in Florida and working on my visa application again. Hopefully I´ll have more to share soon. In the meantime, just a few photos from my journey home.

I was lucky to find the UFO Welcome Center listed on Google Maps when I was driving through a small town. All I can say is that I think we need to invest a bit more in our welcome centers or the aliens are going to turn around and go home. 

I have a vague recollection of Yogi Bear and his propensity for stealing laden picnic baskets from my early childhood. 

The drives are more bearable with frequent stops for walks or bike rides. By the time I hit South Carolina, I had found spring, with blooming daffodils, the sounds of spring peepers, and deliciously warm weather.

Home away from home

I technically live in Florida, but DC still feels like home. It has been utterly delightful to spend the last two weeks with my friends here. In fact, I might even squeeze in one more visit before I leave the country. Since I stay with friends, I am trying hard to make sure I don´t wear out my welcome. My techniques for this are (1) leave the house a lot to visit other friends, (2) do the dishes whenever I can, and (3) bake or cook a lot of delicious food for them when I visit. So far, it seems to be working, but I´ll watch for any anonymous letters telling me stay in Florida.

So, how does a middle-aged retired physicist spend her time while on "vacation"? First, I helped some friends with a rental house they are renovating. They tore everything out down to the exterior brick walls and subfloors, and are framing the walls. I love this kind of work, even thought it was 0C/ 32F the day we were there. I have recently learned how to use a nail gun, and as they say, when you have a nail gun, everything looks like a 2"x4" that needs to be attached. 

I also enjoyed a very find bottle of Cardassian kanar with some of the Star Trek group. Obviously, only a few people in the world would be excited about such a thing, but luckily, I am one of them. 

Lastly, I fixed my computer! I dripped the tiniest amount of water on my laptop last month and fried the keyboard. I decided to try repairing it, but only once I was in DC, where my computer savvy friends R and N stood by with the correct tools and advice when I got stuck. I learned that my computer was really not designed to be taken apart - it took me three hours and a large part of that was shaving off tiny pieces of plastic that glued parts together. 

But eventually it looked like this, and (even better) it now looks like a laptop again. And I can recognize a heat sink or a motherboard, which will presumably be very useful information later in life. 

Along the road

I love Ohio because it houses people that I love, but otherwise, I am very glad that I don´t live there anymore. Apart from the political leanings of its people, it´s not a great fit for me, weatherwise. I actually quite like cold weather, because I like having four seasons. But the many gray days while I was there had me googling the amount of sun in various Spanish cities compared to those I had previously lived in. Unfortunately, I couldn´t find a site that used consistent units - how do I compare number sunny days in one city to number of hours with 80% or less cloud cover in another? I guess I will actually have to visit the cities I´m considering living in and experience it myself.

I spent lots of time with my parents and got to see an old friend from high school, H. But probably the coolest thing was visiting my former undergrad physics professor. I worked for J for several years while he was revising his textbook. It was a remarkable experience for me, because it started me thinking about how people can teach physics more effectively, and it also gave me the opportunity to feel successful in physics, something that I definitely needed to look back on when I kept failing my physics qualifying exam in graduate school. J and I hadn´t seen each other in almost twenty years. He was surprised that I had retired, and I was not-really surprised that he is still teaching and working extremely long hours, a decade after many people would have retired. One thing I was careful not to learn from him was a lack of wook-life balance...

My mother and I, on a day when we headed out to take a hike. On the way to the park, the rain steadily increased, so we aborted and did coffee and crossword puzzles at a local café instead.

I have now left the land of my progenitors, and moved on to (hopefully) sunnier skies. On the way, I picked up a few more attractions to add to my collection.

The artist Peter Wolf Toth had consulted with local tribes and then carved one staue in each US state. This one was in a rest stop in Pennsylvania.

The town of Indiana, Pennsylvania is really, really proud of native son Jimmy Stewart. I viewed the stature at the courthouse, visited the surprisingly extensive museum downtown (his childhood bedroom! His WWII medals! His favorite book from a Hollywood restaurant) and marveled at the crosswalk lights - when a pedestrian is allowed to cross, it´s Jimmy´s voice that gives you permission.

What do I need to say? It´s a gigantic coffee pot. 

Touring the (amazing and kitschy) sights

Most of the trip to Ohio featured pretty cruddy weather, so I had to cancel my planned bike rides. But that left more time for tourist attractions.

I expect this photo to get me mad street cred in the right crowd. This was in Columbus, Ohio, where one family from the Star Trek Group lives, and they were amazed that they had never seen it before.

This Giant Atomic Mouse lives in Cordele, Georgia, on the property of a pest management company. Who will prevail? Only time (and the inevitable comic book adventure) will tell.

Pigs and pancakes. As my friend M said, they are so happy because you are eating pancakes instead of them.

Muffler man turned out to be not that exciting. He was about the size of me, and I´m not that big.

But the final attraction did not disappoint... an actual centaur skeleton! Housed in a tasteful wooden display cabinet, like those used by Victorian gentleman collectors, it is displayed in the center of the University of Tennessee University library. 

Adventures while waiting

I have now been waiting six weeks for the next document that I need for my visa application, which is coming from the US State Department. According to their website, I'll need to wait at least another five. That's okay, though, because all this waiting is good practice for when I have to start dealing with the Spanish bureaucracy.

To fill my time during the wait, I decided to take a longish road trip. I'll be gone for about a month, but I won't be coveting that much territory. Long drives make my back hurt, so I'll do short drives, paired with long visits.

If I have planned this right, I'll greet every current member of the Star Trek group in person, visit with my undergrad physics mentor, and do a lot of bike rides. Oh, and take some photos of roadside attractions. After all, I have to fill the blog with something.

Yesterday's highlight was a decommissioned Titan nuclear missile. It was pouring rain, so I didn't even get out of the car to take the photo. I drove quite close to read the informational plaque and learned that the government has only *loaned* this missile to the local Rotary club. But there was no explanation of why the Rotary Club thought this was a good idea. Still, the existence of the missile meant I drove through Cordele, Georgia and bought a coffee, so I guess it worked to attract at least one tourist.

Today I did a traffic bike ride in Franklin Delano Roosevelt State Park, near were he vacationed in Warm Springs, GA. The 8C/46F weather was apparently too cold for Southerners because the entire path was deserted. I also spent the evening with my good friend T and his family. In-person visits are about to become much harder for me, so I'm really glad I can do them now.

Visitors

I hear that if you move to a trendy vacation spot, all your friends and family will visit you. I think they mean places like Aspen and Hawaii, but it turns out to be true for Gainesville too. As a result of recent visits, I can now tell you the hot spots all tourists must visit. The three best:

•  A sinkhole. For real - you can see lots of geology and nature at the Devil´s Millhopper state park. but I like just telling people that they are going to a sinkhole. 
• Repurpose Project, my favorite thrift store. It´s like a giant garage sale and sells everything - broken bicycles, dinner plates for 25c,  and half used rolls of wrapping paper. Anything that they think someone will use, so that it won´t end up in a landfill.
• Satchel´s pizza, known for it´s artistic flair and homemade sodas. They have bunting made with hair curlers and no wall is left un-mosaiced. 

It was cold when my parents visited for Christmas but still warmer than the rest of the country, so we didn´t complain. 

The cold was so unusual that everyone wrapped their poor little tropical plants in blankets. 

My friends L and CA visited from DC on their way to a financial workshop. They enjoyed the sinkhole, but were more impressed by the alligator we saw on the University of Florida campus. 

I expect to be here for a few more months as I work through all the paperwork needed for the visa application. So act soon if you, too, want the Gainesville tour! VIP tours include the world´s biggest bat house and a1924 manually-operated elevator.