And I don't really have any excuses as to why either because I had this whole week and I have the whole of next week for vacation. Now a LOT has happened... and as many of you know, I have quite a difficult time being brief, so instead, I am going to write two posts tonight.
In this one I will be detailing the irritation with me getting my Aufenthaltserlaubnis or, for those of you who can't really pronounce that, let alone understand what the hell it means, the peice of paper that says that I can stay for the whole year for studying and such.
I need this little peice of paper because if I do not, I am officially a tourist and after three months they can deport me. And I know you are thinking,"Deni Anne, how on earth could you, Miss Never-got-a-detention-in-her-life Tobin, possibly have ever been denied staying in Germany for a year when all you want to do is learn, AND you don't cost the German government a penny, IN FACT you are giving more money to the government?"
Well, (I would say) first that was a horrendous run-on sentence, and secondly, because Baden-Wurtemburg is very funny.
A few weeks ago my host family mom scheduled an appointment for us to apply for this Aufenthaltserlaubnis. What happened was this: Katerina (my guest Family mom) called the Auslander office thing at 6 in the morning to accomodate them. She explained about how we had a scheduled date for getting an Aufhaltserlaubnis, how I am a private exchange student, etc. The woman proceeded to say something along the lines of, "You cannot have an Aufhaltserlaubnis because she is not an exchange student working with an official exchange program or school program." I'm not sure how the rest of the call went but Katerina was very angry about it all. As I awoke that morning (8 minutes earlier than I had planned) she explained to my bleary-eyed unshowered person what was going on. Later that day she explained it to Christian (my guest family dad).
Christian also knew (because he researched it before I came) that the law states something similar to: When you are in Deutschland studying you can stay, because it costs next to nothing for the government to have you so it isn't really a problem. Katerina and I have also already got this thing signed that I am living now in Rommelshausen, and so Waiblingen, our "county" sent us a letter that told us I must attend a school or I am breaking the law. At that point I was already attending Fredreich Schiller Gymnasium. Then Christian, who is very good at reasoning things out, called the boss of the lady that Katerina spoke with on Monday and explained to her everything that was going on. First she said that in the states of germany they have special regulations of how they should read the law. In Baden-Wurtemburg the law previously described is more specific and says basically that they do not except a lot of exchange students unless they are in these special programs or with a school for these programs. Christian then told her about how I am attending a school like we were told I must and she pretended not to hear him because at the time in the STATE of Baden-Wurtemburg I was only a tourist. Meaning I may only be here for three months and then they must deport me. Even though in the TOWN I was living here officially.
After all the careful stepping and fingernail biting, we finally got a new meeting to apply for the Aufenthaltserlaubnis. We went, and the lady we were supposed to meet was mysteriously sick, she was the first lady we talked to, the one who said that I couldn't stay at all and deportation was the only option. Which we thought was great because we went to this other lady who was very nice and even, upon hearing about what had happened with her colleague, hinted that she would probably get in trouble for doing that. the whole application process took about an hour, or less, and dashed my hopes of missing gym class. A few days later i was approved and now i have this cool thingy in my passport. It's pretty cool.
The only really lame part about me finally getting it was, I was classified as a "special case" meaning normally, they wouldn't let a private exchange happen, and they let me because they felt like it.
So now it's kind of funny. i was almost deported from a country, guys! And for what? Wanting to learn to speak their language.What a criminal I am!
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