More paperwork!

WOW, I must say the Unitd Arab Emirants LOVES their paper trail!  Before I was able to be given the teaching position in th U.A.E. I had to gather my Teaching certification certificate, my college Degree, and my Marriage license and send them off to become "Authenticated".

The steps in completing this task can be a bit daunting. I outlined the steps in doing this on my December 15th post. However, that is not the end of the paperwork. Today, I had to take my marriage license that had been through the U.S. autentication process, and travel down town to locate a translation service.

Translation??  Yes, you heard me correctly. I had to take my U.S. government stamped documents to the Foreign Ministry office located in the Basement of the Marina Mall. When there, I was required to pay $150 Dirhams for the attendent to place yet another stamp on my papers.

After that was completed, I traveled to another area of the city, Hamden center, to locate a translation service. When the taxi dropped me off, I had to dodge the racing cars to cross the street. There were many translation Services to be found. I walked into one store, and spoke to an older Emirate gentlemen. He was quite nice and translated my documents fairly quickly.

I also had him translate my Maryland Driver's license so I would be able to eventually acquire my UAE driver's license.

As you can see, each document must go
 through many steps and many stamps!

Here is a picture of my documents translated:

I know you are probably wondering why I need these documents thoroughly authenticated and translated. The main purpose is to acquire my Resident Card. Without it, I would not be able to stay in the country.

On the bus awaiting our finger printing!

Another item on thngs needed for my resident card is having my fingerprints cleared. Yesterday morning, we were loaded onto a bus and taken to a place to be fingerprinted. Of course, they wanted to do this at 6:30 am!  The bus was packed and whirled through the streets. Once there, we again were placed in a holding pattern awaiting our turn to be fingerprinted. The fingerprinting office uses a computer scanner to acquire our prints. At least, we were not having to clean off messy fingerprinting ink! 

Hopefully soon, we will be obtaining our Resident I.D. card. Without it, we will not be able to use banking services, get our apartment, secure electricity and cable television services!