Tourist Visas Renewed

We recently had to renew our tourist visas while we're still waiting on some documents we need for our missionary visas. So I went to the Philippine Bureau of Immigration's site, downloaded and printed 10 copies of the forms (2 for each of us since they need two "original" copies, no phtocopying allowed ). Spent a good part of the morning filling out 24 pages of forms, got a taxi to immigration, walked up to the window only to hear "Oh we don't use these forms anymore"... [sigh].

In the end, Rachel was nice enough to take over for me and spared a man who's spent most of his adult life working to get away from paper forms, from having to fill out another 24 pages or so.

The second time was a charm for us and we were able to get our visas renewed for two months. It took a few hours of waiting in the immigration lobby along the other unfortunate people who had to be there. But I'm slowly accepting the fact that not much happens in the Philippines without paper and waiting.