"What?! You lost my passport! So what am I supposed to do now?"
"I don´t know, señorita. Maybe come back tomorrow. I don´t know."
Great. I had expected that registrating a visa in Ecuador would take different forms than in the Netherlands. However, I hadn´t expected them to screw it up. Or am I not understanding the rules of the game?
I´ve already realised that things work differently here. If you subscribe for a course via the university website and they put you on a waiting list, don´t wait. Instead, go to the class you intended on taking. The professor will tell you there is lots of space. This means that, even though the course is full, you can grab a chair from the corridor and join the class.
Another example: buying books. There is a crowd of people in the bookstore. Everyone takes a number from the machine at the entrance and waits until it´s called for. You have to pay for your books as well. Your number is A67. They´ve just called for D45. What do you do? Don´t wait. Make friends with the guy behind the counter. Let him know you have lots to do. And he will let you pay for your books in between customer D80 and D81.
So I got this far: you don´t wait."Señor, por favor. I can´t come back tomorrow. Could I speak to the director?" I am sent to another office. I explain what happened. A man – the director apparently - shakes his head, takes me to a storage room and starts yelling at some people. Hasty searching in different envelops and folders follows. Within five minutes I stand outside the building with my passport in my bag.