Today was a day for bureaucracy. Kim and I took the tram down to Fulbright this morning. We were to go with Nicholas (the American Program Coordinator) to get our residence permits. I'm not quite sure I understand why we needed to have such a thing, but I just do as I'm told. We already have a visa that says we can be in the country beyond the 90 day limit (Americans can go to any EU country without a visa for less than 90 days), which required us to go to Chicago and submit a lot of paperwork. Not that any of you care, but in order to get a residence permit, we needed to provide:

• photocopies of our passports, including the pages with the visa stamp, our passport numbers and the stamp from our entry to the EU (when we flew into Frankfurt);
  
• Two passport-size photos of each of us;
  
• An official welcome letter from the Fulbright director (explains why we're here longer than 90 days);
  
• Our marriage certificate, and;
  
• A notarized letter stating what my BSU health insurance will and won't cover.

The final two items required that I get an Apostille from the requisite states (Indiana for insurance, Missouri for marriage certificate) and have the documents translated into Greek.

Let me further digress by explaining that while Greek bureaucracy can be blamed for some of this, U.S. bureaucracy has been just as tedious. In getting the apostille for the insurance letter, my colleague Nancy graciously offered to take my letter to the Secretary of State's office on a trip to Indianapolis. When she arrived at the office, they told her they could not put the seal on it because the notary at Ball State had neglected to include two lines in her notarization. I informed the BSU benefits office, which provided another letter, had the notary do it a second time, then I drove the letter down to Indy.

In any event, Kim and I met Wilf and Mary Jo, oceanography professors from Texas A&M. Wilf is officially the Fulbrighter: Mary Jo is here also doing research but on her sabbatical. They arrived only a week ago. Along with Nicholas, the 5 of us went to the office for residence permits. There was a line outside the building. Fortunately Nicholas had spoken in advance with people and we were able to bypass everyone and go right in.

Thank goodness he handled everything. There's no way we could have done it on our own. The office had about a dozen people at various desks and people went from one desk to another having items stamped and checked. He had us all sit and wait while he did the running around, getting the requisite stamps and signatures. I really wanted to shoot video in this place but was afraid to do so. Wilf and I sat in front of a chain-smoking woman who appeared to be the last check. She had two rubber stamps that she used on almost every page of people's documents (each person had the same sorts of documents I bulleted above) and initialed each one. She had to deal with passports from lots of different countries. I have no idea how she knew if they were authentic.

The residence permit we received is temporary. In two weeks we have to go back to get the premanent one. Fortunately we only have to pick it up, which is supposed to be significantly easier (good thing, as Nicholas won't go with us the next time).

Afterward Kim and I wandered back home walking through Omonia, a wonderfully eclectic area. We bought "street food" from several shops, admired the uniqueness of the people and places and looked in a lot of store windows. Without question the souvlaki we got was the highlight. Eventually she needed a restroom so we decided to stop at Starbucks. Ironically, my coffee there was the least expensive I've had in Greece!

This was Kim's first day out since her concussion. We got back home about 6 hours after we left and she was starting to feel a headache come on so we made it back at just about the right time. Fortunately today's weather was nice so that wasn't an issue.

Today's editorial addresses the issue of universities as asylum. Years ago a law was passed to prevent police from stepping onto campuses because they abused it before and tried to quell dissent that way. In the December riots, rioters used the university as a safe place, going out to cause trouble then taking refuge on campus (and trashing the place in the process). The paper had opinion pieces pro and con explaining the need for asylum. This opinion piece says the system is broken.