In most of the post Communistic countries, an ID of citizenship is required for every person. People in the United States are not familiar with this. This ID of citizenship works like driver’s license in the United States (it works like, it is not driver’s license.) If police stops you or at hotel they need to proof your identity, so you show your ID of citizenship. Also, if your country is in the European Union, then you can fly and travel only on your ID of citizenship, but why I am telling you all this?
In Chile you need an ID of citizenship even if you are not a citizen like me or other 150 foreign students that I am having classes with, in order to leave country. If you are staying in Chile for longer than, I believe 120 days or 4 months, in order to leave country you need to get Chilean ID of citizenship. So if you are just visiting for 6 weeks or so, you do not need apply.
So one pretty cold day in August, I and group of other 15 students from my program woke up in the morning at 6:00 a.m. to get on the line at 7:15 a.m. The office did not open until 8:00 a.m. but the line was really long already at 7:15 a.m. You can probably tell that this was a long day for all of us, when I am saying times.
The office opened at 8:00 a.m. and actually, everything was smooth. We waited only an hour to get our names start calling because our group were right next to each other. Unfortunately, my last name has a special symbol, which they could not type. This was a turning point. I waited extra 50 minutes for them to figure out how to type my last name because this document is essential for the office that we went after. If my last name would not be same as the one in my passport or Visa, I would have to do it all over again. at 10:00 a.m. we were finally out and heading for the next office.
We entered the room and wow! There was a lot of, I mean a lot of people. We got our ticket number. The personal was calling people with ticket number 182, and I had 224. The next three hours I was in line. I made a friend from Columbia, who was in Chile because he was taking TOEFL. He wanted to apply to a U.S. university, so I was giving him some advice. I read a lot, too. Moving forward, I finally got called and in four to six weeks, my ID of Chilean Citizenship will be in Santiago.