Inspected, Injected, Detected, Neglected, etc.

Wow, it's been a long time since I last updated. Well, there have been a number of things keeping me busy, most notably my quest to be legal in Greece.
Last week Brad and I found out that we are required to apply for residence permits before our three month student Visas expire. That gives us aout three weeks to finish a gigantic, massive ugly stack of paperwork. We've got to have proof of financial support, and proof of our citizenship in the US, and proof of insurance and proof that we are students, and proof that we are healthy, and then to top it all off, we've got to pay the government 150 Euros.
Most of these documents can be easily required by speaking to the right people at Anatolia, who then provide us with letters in Greek that hopefully say what they are supposed to say (this can be a little tricky; yesterday I managed to translate one of these letters and discovered that it did not, in fact, say the right thing.)
However, by far the most unpleasant part of the process thus far has been the trip to the hospital that Brad and I took yesterday.
We arrived at 8:40 for an 8:45 appointment. We waited in one waiting room until a nurse escorted us to another waiting room, and then, half an hour later, to a long line snaking out of an office door. Although we had no idea what we were actually waiting for, Brad and I got on line. About twenty minutes after that, we finally made our way into the office, where we discovered that the people in the office didn't speak English. We did manage to communicate our names and personal information, however, and we were sent to wait in yet another line down the hall. The people at the end of this line were all going into a little room and coming out of the little room with swabs of cotton pressed to their arms, so we assumed that we should be prepared to be poked by some sort of needle.
Sure enough, when it was my turn to enter the little room, the nurse started to prepare a needle while chatting to me in Greek. When she asked me a question, I explained δεω καταλαβαινω, or "I don't understand". She then proceeded to inform me in no uncertain terms that I should learn Greek, because the Greeks all learn some English and the Americans never learn Greek. I would have been upset with her for yelling at me, but the lecture definitely took my mind off of the needle that was entering my arm as she spoke, so I didn't let it bother me. Actually, I didn't even look at my arm through the entire procedure, which is kind of bad, since I now have no idea what they did to me in there, but is also kind of good, because I think it my have been unpleasant. The man after me fainted during his session with the lecturing woman, and he had to be taken away on a stretcher.
After Brad and I were done with our first needle encounter, we were to taken to yet another waiting room, where we sat until they called us in to be given TB tests. This time there was no doubt as to what exactly they were doing to me, partially because the nurse spoke English and explained it all, and partially because they finished the test by drawing big black circles around the spots where the tests had been administered, and then labelling them with the date and the name of the test. Brad and I were both sent on our way with sharpie writing all over our forearms, and instructions not to wash the area for the next few days. Personally, I wasn't thrilled about the fact that I was expected to spend the next few days with black writing all over me, and no advance notice; I mean, what if I was planning to attend a black tie event and needed to wear a strapless evening gown? What if I had had a hot date for that evening? What if I just didn't feel like looking like a dissection specimen for two days?
Luckily I never go to black tie events, my boyfriend is across the atlantic, and I don't really care all that much about the sharpie marks, although they are not overwhelming attractive, I must say. I'm more upset about the prospect of going back to the damn hospital tomorrow to have them check up on my TB spots again. I'm hoping there's no line, but I don't think I have much hope.
Meanwhile, one of the kids asked me about the writing on my arms today, and I explained the whole situation.
"Oh!" he said. "So you had to have shots?"
"Yeah," I said.
"Wow," he said. "I once had to have three shots in one day. It was really awful. But I told the doctor that I just wanted to get better."
"What was the matter?" I asked.
"Well," he explained, "All these blood vessels around my eyes kept breaking. I had all these little spots around my eyes."
"Oh no!"
"Yeah. Well, it was kind of my fault. It was because I was coughing really hard all the time." He mimicked some unpleasant sounding coughs for me. "But it was fake coughing. I was just coughing like that so I wouldn't have to go to school. Don't tell my mom, OK?"