Working out the Kinks

Whenever you move – even if it was just in the US – you have kinks to work out. They’re are always issues and hiccups. But moving to Spain, with time differences, foreign banking and the like, it’s even more hiccupy.

We’re taking deep breaths. A lot of deep breaths. And it’s not just about how different things are here. We seemed to have worked out many of those. Sometimes it comes down to telling yourself it’s different and you just have to deal with it. Great – we can do that. But for things back in the US where there is a time difference, and it requires expensive phone calls at a $1 a minute, it’s incredibly frustrating.

We had put travel notices on our credit cards, but some of them have experienced denials and delays because of the sheer volume of purchases we’re making for things, and at stores we wouldn’t normally shop at if we were just tourists. How many people buy a refrigerator when they’re staying at a hotel on a beach for their spring break?

But now, Amazon doesn’t seem to like us since we’re shipping to a place we’ve never shipped to. And our billing address is also not something they’ve seen before. Discovering that .com and .es versions of their website are totally different and Prime in the US isn’t Prime in Spain. This was hard for Jeff to swallow as I heard swearing and heavy typing from his office.  Both our bank and Amazon want to send him a code via email to verify his identity. He’ll have 10 minutes to input it before it becomes invalid. But it takes them more than 15 to send the code. He is not happy.

I, on the other hand, got an email from American Airlines that they’ve bumped our daughter off her flight from school to Spain. And trying to fix this via email or chat? Yeah, not gong to happen. So I had to call them and racked up even more phone charges as I waded through the automated menu shouting ‘Customer Service!’ into their voice recognition software. I found that ironic.

Then the dealer where we sold our car before we left, hasn’t deposited our check. They said it would take two weeks and it’s been nearly 4. Ugh. Rattling cages in the US from a foreign country is an expensive, time-consuming, and frustrating business.  I’m just writing off this first month. It’s like being hazed at a fraternity or sorority in college. Sure none of it makes any sense. You’re dealing with unreasonable people, nonsense bullshit, but if you’re drunk, it makes it go down easier. Aha! I haven’t tried that. Note to self.

Oh well, it’s Fallas. Starting tomorrow we’ll be jumping into the festival of it all and embracing our new city. We’ve been here two weeks now. Only two more to go and I figure we’ll have been through one full billing cycle for all the loose ends back home and the new ones here. Then its smooth sailing. Yeah right.  Just kidding.