As of Thursday morning, I’m now an official CAULI-PHONE-YA resident. After spending two hours at the DMV, I got my driver’s license, California plates, and registered to vote. As soon as I walked in and saw the massive amount of people waiting in lines, I figured I was going to be stuck there all day long. But all in all, the experience wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be. I did research the whole thing online so I already had an appointment and had all of my paperwork with me – car title, smog check, passport, insurance card, completed form, last minute cramming. Even though the entire process took two hours, there was very little waiting – it was mostly jumping through hoops – standing in line and getting a number, filling out the driver’s license application (which for some reason isn’t online), waiting a couple of minutes until my number was called, getting the form processed, paying the fee, standing in another line to get fingerprinted and photographed, taking the test, standing in another line to get my test graded, missing five lame questions and barely passing the written test, getting my temporary license, standing in the very first line once again to get another number to get my car registered, being told that I need to go outside and get my car verified first before taking a number, going outside and driving the car to the verification lane (not the driving test lane), waiting for the two cars ahead of me to get verified, popping the hood and getting the car verified, driving back to a parking spot, standing in line again to get a number, frantically copying everything that I had already filled out on the registration form that I had found online to the registration form that the car verification guy filled out, waiting for my number to get called, surrendering my IL title and paying yet another fee, standing in another line to get the actual plates, and finally leaving.

Really, not bad at all.

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