Visas. They're not much fun.
I know I've been muttering about this off and on for a while, but today it has all become too much.
In April, we were told that to apply for an extension would be very simple, involve a two page form, possibly a medical for me but not Husbink (due to having had most of it done last time for working in a hospital. Not because they have strange sexist laws...) and all would be well.
So we put it on the back burner a little while we dealt with the house move and the surgery.
Whadda mistaka to make!
We discovered a few days before I went into hospital that the above information was false. We needed to complete the same huge form as last time (including the bit where Husbink writes a letter saying "yes, I do want my wife to stay with me") and we both need medicals. The medicals include a full check over by a nurse, then by a GP, then a chest x-ray (moderately expensive) and blood tests (if anything was going to induce me to swear on my blog, it would be the cost of the blood tests.) However, we managed to complete all that last Monday and the GP assured us it would take about 3 days from finishing the tests to our forms being completed.
So we gave them until Friday and rang to see how it was going. As I've previously mentioned, the receptionists aren't great so Husbink didn't get far over the phone. I fabricated an excuse to pop in (we had part of the form, perhaps they needed it back?). There was hope that it would all be finished today. But there was still questions over whether part of my form would be ok. There was a test that had already been repeated once and might need repeating again. And again. And again. The nurse would ring me back on Friday afternoon to tell me where we were up to with that.
She didn't.
But these things happen and I wasn't too worried about that. There was the agreement that either they would ring me or I would ring them on Monday to see where we were up to.
So about an hour ago, I did. The receptionists were, as ever, special and unhelpful. But I managed to leave a message for the nurse. Having spoken to her I have established that 1) she has no idea when the forms will be completed but will try to put pressure on the GP; 2) the bit of my test that might have needed repeating is sort of ok; 3) the blood test results that should have taken a matter of days to be returned are still not back. This is probably why the forms aren't complete - but they couldn't work that out on Friday!
The second thing is that we require our marriage certificate to show that we are indeed in a stable relationship. About 10 days ago, Husbink's mum posted it to us. A few days before that we had received something in the post that Mr & Mrs SD had posted three days previously so I felt quite confident of the postal abilities between home and here. Ha!
Still it has not arrived. And despite the fact that my m-i-l sent it registered, it can only be tracked to having left England. How useful!
We had been hoping to go the the immigration office tomorrow. We won't be. Our trip to Sydney in August is ebbing away from us and that makes me very sad. Very, very sad.
Thank you for bearing with me...rant over...