New Driving Licence and Cellphone (or not)
I am about ready to kill someone right now. Or at least I was earlier, but I have calmed down a bit now.We are only allowed to drive here on our UK licences for 3 months, by which time we have to get an Illinois licence, which involves taking a written and practical driving test.
I decided to take my driving test today. As I am not allowed a Social Security number, being a non-working non-citizen, I have to get what they call a Temporary Visitors Driving Licence. There are loads of DMV offices around (Department of Motor Vehicles), but there are only a few of them that do my type of licence. And the nearest one is a 90 minute drive away and they only do those licences on a Monday. I wanted to take the test while we still had the hire car, rather than doing it in the truck which would possibly not be so easy to manoeuvre. So I called them last week to find out what I need to take, and if I need an appointment (no), and have studied the ‘Illinois Rules of the Road’ over the last few days.
I packed up all my paperwork, studied the map and drove there this morning. I watched about 3 people in front of me get turned away for not having the right stuff with them, but felt fairly safe myself. But when I showed my paperwork I was told that the letter from the Social Security Office proving lack of SS number was not good enough to act as proof of address, even though it had my address at the top, as it had not been posted out to me, but had only been handed to me at the SS office. I had nothing else on me so had to drive all the way home (90 minutes) to find something from the bank with the address on, and went back again (another 90 minutes). And then that time they told me I cannot take the test as my visa has less than 6 months to run. Yes, that is another problem we have to sort out – we thought it was valid for 3 years, but when we got into the country I was told that it is only for 6 months, but can be renewed, we just need to figure out how and when. So I currently only have 5 months left to run on it, and they only let you take the driving test if you have at least 6 months left. But I will never have more than 6 months on the visa, as it will only be issued for 6 months at a time until we get married, I am only supposed to drive on my UK licence for 3 months, and we will not be getting married for at least 6 months. So after some fruitless begging and crying, I left again, for another 90 minute drive home.
Now an American might not think much of driving 90 minutes to get somewhere only to stay 20 minutes, but an English person expects an overnight stay at the end of that kind of journey, or at the very least a full day out. I mean, come on, we could get to the other side of the country in that time for God’s sake!!
Also we had gone on Saturday to the mobile phone shop to try to get a cell phone for me (look at me, I am bilingual already, mobile phone/cell phone!). We weren’t able to get one before as did not have any ID, but now Gordon has had his SS number for nearly 2 weeks, which is supposed to open up so many more doors for us. So we spent about 30 minutes in the store while they tried to run some credit and ID checks on us, only to be told that there was no record of him or his SS number in the system. So no phone allowed. Gordon phoned the SS office this morning to check, and they said the number is definitely valid and it must be a fault in the system of the cell phone company.
It feels like for every step forward we make here, we take 2 steps backwards.
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