Incoming!

Did you know that I'm Italian? I've always been Italian in that my father's mother is Italian and his father had Italian blood from the Ellis Island era; but now, I'm Italian like from Italy. I have an ID number and everything, but still no document to prove it... but we'll get to that.

If you're pressed for time then you can skip over the small type and move on to the big news below...

As you may or may not know, for the past year and a half I've been living as an (whispered) illegal immigrant here in Spain. What I haven't shared with all you people is that I've been working for much longer, well over 2 years, to get my paperwork sorted out. When I came I thought, 'This is Spain, not Texas, and I'm American. No problem.' It IS a problem, as it turns out. Which is why I've been driving myself crazy and starving to death teaching English, because no other industry will hire an illegal.

I've had a couple of minor heart attacks in this time, like the time that the Spanish department of work came to inspect one of my classes, the time they questioned me for 20 minutes in the Amsterdam airport, and five uncomfortable trips through customs in Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and Ireland.

I tried everything to get my papers worked out quicker. I considered getting married. I tried to find a business that would sponsor me for a visa (there were a few that were willing to do it, but then called me back after a couple of days saying, "How about you just call us when you have your papers sorted out?" - Thanks a lot, assholes!). I thought about going back to school; went to the university to get some information about visas and wound up walking out with another English class. I talked to a lawyer (actually, no, I talked to friends who were talking to lawyers) and found out that unless I was a surgeon or civil engineer then there wasn't going to be any amnesty for me. I even tried the idea that was too simple to work, just renewing my ID from when I was a student here. No dice.

Meanwhile, since early spring of 2005 I've been trying to become Italian. With a passport from any EU country you can work legally in any other EU country. It's like having a driver's license from Montana and working in Florida. You see, Italy has this law that if you have Italian lineage on your father's side and you can come up with all the documents to prove it, then you can be Italian too. I told my parents this in 2004 and they laughed at me. Then, in beginning of 2005 my dad called me and said, "Did you know that if you have Italian family then you can get an Italian passport?" The conversation went like this:
Dad- I was just talking to Bill (Something Italian) from work and he said something about having an Italian passport. He said that you can get an Italian passport if you have Italian ancestors.
Claire- I know, I told you that last year and you laughed at me.
Dad- Oh, well I'm sure you didn't have all the information.
Claire- Yes I did, I told you just as you're telling me now.
Dad- Oh, well I was thinking maybe it would be a good idea...
Claire- I know, that's what I said last year. I even sent you a link to the embassy's web page, didn't you read it?

So we started the process. I planned to move in about 8 months, that's enough right? Some of the documents were hard to find though, and my parents wound up paying $150 per document to something like a private investigation agency to get some documents. Other things were hard to find too, such as:

• My grandmother's birth certificate from Milan, 1924. (This required a couple of emails and phone calls to our Italian cousins who don't like Americans and don't speak English).
  
• My mother's birth certificate, the long form. You can get the short form through the mail, but to get the long form you have to go to the hospital yourself. This chore took two day trips to Manhattan.
• My dad's birth certificate from the Hackensack, NJ town hall that changed addresses without leaving a forwarding address. It took 2 months to track them down.
  
• My grandfather's death certificate from Florida.
• My grandparents' divorce certificate, which hadn't been seen since the 1970's.
• My brother and I had to officially change our names since our middle names are our mom's maiden name. In Italy you can't have 2 family names, and therefore we had to officially change our names in a country that still had no official record of us.
• My grandmother's valid US passport, which hadn't been valid for 10 years. So my dad had to cart my her out of the nursing home to get passport photos, then to the US post office to order a renewal.
• My grandmother's naturalization papers, which she said were somewhere in the apartment she sold 4 years ago.
  

Finally we rounded everything up and took it in to the consulate where we found out 2 things:

1. I had to present the papers IN PERSON, so I would have to come home from "California" where I was on an "extended vacation".
   
2. We had all the wrong forms. All the certificates (birth, death, marriage) had to have an official stamp on them called an apostele (or something like that), so it was back to town halls in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Florida.
   

And then, in March we had it all together and I flew home for 3 days to hand in the paperwork. "You can probably come in with passport photos in about 10 days," the Signore at the consulate said. April went by, no answer. May: no answer. In June we finally got a letter in Italian. I can understand Italian, but I couldn't understand this damn letter. I understood the words, but not the content. There were numbers and acronyms everywhere and a bunch of ambiguous past participles. When my brother got the same letter later that week he went in to the consulate to get some answers. What they told him: we're finally Italian, we have an ID number, and only need to get the passport to have proof!

So last week my brother finally got his passport. My brother is now Italian and we know that there are no more hoops for me to jump through. So...

I ' M C O M I N G H O M E F O R 3 W E E K S !

That's right, folks! My neoprene-free ass will be in the United States of America from July 25 until August 14. So here's the real reason for me writing this blog: Who wants to do stuff with me?!

Unfortunately, for a place where I lived for 18 years of my life I have surprisingly few resources in the Boston area. I will have no pool to swim in (unless I find a masters team willing to take me in) and so I'm down for all kinds of open water swimming (Cape Cod anyone?). My bike will be my mom's old bike from the 1970s which I will deck out with clipless pedals, a bottle cage and nothing more. I have no idea where people go for long bike rides in Boston?! The only thing that I'll have that won't be ghetto is lots of lovely New England roads and trails to run through (and FINALLY a track!). I won't always have a car at my disposal since the car I learned to drive on, the Battleship (born in 1992) was just sold to some friends for $1 and I'll be sharing a car with my mom, but hey, I can get around that.

However I WANT TO TRAIN AND RACE! Does anyone know any triathlons/open water swims/running races in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island or New York in the next 3 weeks that still have open registration? Also, other than the car constraint, I can be flexible about schedules since my only commitment in those 3 weeks will be 2 mornings in the Italian consulate.

My parents' house is in Winchester, which is a small town about 20 minutes north of Boston (inside 495), so if you are within like 100 miles of there, let's get together. Who's coming with me?! C'mon, it'll be fun!