Last weekend Kyle and I went to Lille France for Europe's largest flea market. I need to write a bit more on that but I have a more pressing blog inspiration today.
This fall I will be teaching a couple of beginning jazz classes to students ranging in age from 8 to 18. In order to do this, there is a bunch of paper work to be completed. One piece of the paper work is a background check.
In the US this involves filling out a piece of paper, writing a check for the fee and waiting for the report to be mailed (snail or email) to whoever wanted it. Maybe a ten minute investment of my time - tops.
In Belgium, I had to personally go to my city hall during their very limited business hours, hand over my ID watch them tap at their computer keyboard for 15 minutes and then receive instructions to come back on yet another week day during very limited business hours to pick up my report.
So yesterday I went and began this process. It wasn't until I was driving home that I realized that I thought nothing of this! I wasn't moaning and groaning to myself about limited hours, about paying for parking, about how nothing in Belgium is a one step and you are done process. I simply accepted it as the way life is. And really, I'm still not really bothered by this, it is just what is done. In fact, as I was walking out of city hall I was thinking to myself, "well that was easy."
Go back and read my Belgian ID blogs and you'll see how far I've come in accepting how bureaucracy is carried out here.
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