Rome: Day 4, voting for the new president! NOT!

What can i say? We've seen a lot of Rome now just walking around and hanging out. Thats all we have been doing lately. Just walking around, hanging out, and eating good food.

Oh, well actually today Morganne and I had QUITE the experience at the American Embassy today. We went to vote for the new president of the united states of america and it seemed like no one there really knew what they were doing. It was worst than the post office.

So there are two options they give you for absentee voting: One is they send out for your absentee ballot from america and when they get it in you fill it out and send it and wait for the ballot to come and then you fill that out and send it. Takes a few weeks for that to work. The second is the emergency vote where you fill out the absentee registration for and the ballot, you put the ballot in one special envelope, seal it, then put the absentee form and the ballot envelope into a larger envelope. Write the address of the county clerk that you vote from if you were at home. Then send it to your county clerk. Takes about an hour for this. So we did the emergency ballot. When it came time to put everything into the big envelope the absentee form didnt quite fit, so we were confused what they wanted us to do with it. I go up to the window and ask what should i do?

First Man: "Well, you seal the big envelope and give us the absentee form."
Me: Oh okay. so I seal the envelope and hand it to them.
First Man: He looks at it, flips it a couple times and runs to get another man.
2nd Man: "Have you registered before? Are you a registered voter in the state that you live in?".
Me: Yes, i have been registered for years now.
2nd Man: Well you have to see when this ballot must be in sent in by."
Me: Okay, Well thats November 4th.
2nd Man: No, that is the election day. Its different for every state, you have 50 different options, i suggest you go back and read the instructions more clearly." ( All of that said in a pretty authoritative way )
Me: Well, all i was asking was if i needed to put this sheet in the big envelope, and the guy said for me to seal it so i did.
2nd Man: Okay well, i suggest you go back and read the instructions carefully.

Okay, so i go back to the table where Morganne is. I look in this text book of instructions on how to vote via absentee ballot and I see that FOR MICHIGAN the ballot must be in by November 4th. Morganne is there looking through her text book, she lives in New York so her rules are a bit different. She thinks she needs a witness to see that she filled out the Absentee registration form correctly. So she goes up to the window and takes a stab at it.

The man approaches, pretty frustrated looking, stomping his feet already and she hasnt even said anything.

Morganne: Hi sir, there is not a problem here i just need to know if this page goes into the envelope.
Man: Well are you a registered voter? If you are then you dont need to fill this sheet out and it doesnt have to go into the envelope.
Morganne: Yes, i have been registered for a couple years now and I thought this was for the absentee ballot not for registering.
Man: Well if you flip to that page and see the top of it you can clearly see that it says it is for registering if you have not registered yet.
Morganne: (She flips to the page and sees that it is not for registering and infact is for the absentee ballot, she shows it to the man) No sir, this is not for registering, look.
Man: (looks at the page and sees that she is correct)
Morganne: Now do i need this page in the envelope or do you guys need it? Because it doesnt fit in the envelope.
Man: Oh, well just fold it and put it in.
Morganne: Okay, now it also says (While pointing to the text book) I need a witness to sign this, is that you?
Man: Yes yes, we will take care of that (while acting pretty flustered)

Morganne returns and I go up to get a new envelope because i was told incorrectly to go ahead and seal mine.

As i approach i see the man yelling at his three collegues about the form that Morganne and I are filling out currently. Yelling about how he didnt know what the page was and why no one told him. As i get to the window he sees that i am there and looks pretty angry at me.

Man: I do not vote, i am not from america and niether is my collegue so we dont know what these are, we never have to fill this out.
Me: Okay, well i have this all filled out and i need a new envelope now.
Man: Yes, you put this page in the envelope (while he rips me off a new envelope from the packet he was waving infront of his collegues while yelling at them)
Me: Thank you, thats all you needed to tell me. That was the only answer from you that me and my friend needed.

I go back to the table. Morganne and I get all situated and put the address of the county clerks on the envelopes. Well in order to send it you need a return address right? Well we just think that the embassy takes care of that. So we both go up to the window.

Morganne: Hi, so do we just use the american embassy address for the "From/Return" Address?
Man: No no, if you were to put our address on there it would just be returned to us and nothing would happen, you need to put your address of where you are living here in Rome.
Me: Well we are travellers, we are not living here in Rome, we are not registered to any address here.
Man: Well if you are travellers than you should have let your state know where you were going to be so they could send you the address to put on the envelope.
Morganne: Well we were told differently, because we are travellers we had to fill these out here in Rome now so we could get them sent in on time.
Me: Yeah, we are backpacking through europe we are not staying in any city longer than just a few nights. We were told, by someone who works at this embassy, that we could do it this way.
Man: Well if you are studying abroad then you just put the address of where you are studying.
Me: But we are not studying, we are travelling, we do not have an address.
Man: Well how long are you here in Rome?
Morganne: One night, it doesnt matter, we are here for one night then we are going somewhere else.
Man: Well then i suggest you go over to that computer (pointing to an old desktop in the corner of the room) and figure out the phone number to New York and call them and find out what you need to do.

At this time, both of us, out of frustration just walk over to the computer because we think that will be the only thing to make that guy happy. This guy is litterally yelling at us at this time like we are just little kids and we dont know what to do. We havent once given him any attitude yet and thats all this guy is doing to us.

Morganne sits down, clicks on the drop menu of the states. A window pops up saying something along the lines of "Sorry, the software on this computer must be updated in order to allow this function to happen."

Oh great, so this computer doesnt even work, she tried to google search and the computer only lets us browse American.gov.

So we both decide that basically we are getting no where by using this computer and by talking to this guy. Its all a waste of time and we just walk out, with ballots and Absentee regestraion forms in the respective envelopes and in our hands.

Im thinking that if we just put our home address on the "From/Return" corner then the worst that will happen is that it will just be sent to our parents houses and they can just walk into where our ballots need to go. Right?

Well we get back to Inti's apartment and tell him about our expiriance and he tells us we could just put his address on there. Then i tell him my idea and he thinks that is probably better. But then he says we cant just put that into any mailbox because then it would just enter into the Italian Post service which is not very reliable, he tells us that we should probably just force the american embassy to send it out for us so that our ballots are mailed into a more reliable circulation...

Holy crap, does it really have to be this hard??? I mean really....
Everyone here in Rome that we have met so far has been really nice and helpful, except for the place that you'd think we would/should get the most respect in, our own embassy! There really shouldnt be a problem with this at all, you'd think they would already have all the kinks all worked out by now.

Other than that, we have just been hanging out here in Rome. Its great here. I definatly want to come back here and it will definalty be hard for me to leave here. Morganne and I have already decided today that we will stay one more day here before continuing on our travells.

We ate fried artichokes today in the jewish ghetto, they were amazing. There are so many things here that i just wonder "Why doesnt america have these?? Why is it in Rome that i eat fried artichokes for the first time?!?!" There are also these awesome flavored rice cakes that Morganne and I have been getting from a this grocery store that are litterally the best thing i have ever eatn. They are like chips, but little flavored crispy rice cakes. They have Rosemarry, Olive, and Sweet Pepper flavores for the vegans. A bunch of cheese flavores that are more like just normal cheeses, not like nacho cheese or cool breeze or whatever. Then they have a whole line of dessert rice cakes, I cant eat them but they i can imagine they are pretty darn good!

Tomarrow we go to the Vatican. And we go to our first show here in europe. The Business is playing at this venue that Inti is describing litterally, a castle...but only just a single room in the castle. We are going to see a punk rock show in a castle, how punk rock is that?!