Wow, we have overcome in the last two days two major bureaucratic hurdles of being strangers in a strange land!
Number One: Getting a Costa Rican driver's license yesterday. What an adventure! We went with a friend from school who also needed to do this. After she was pursued by a suspected robber in the morning before we set out, a taxi driver ditched us, an interesting medical exam, lots of waiting at the driver's license bureau, different rules at different desks from the people that helped the three of us (Andrea got a difficult person who made up new requirements that she didn't meet), more waiting, and Seth's name being misspelled on the first shot at his license, we FINALLY achieved a victory. Despite the many hurdles, God was with us: He protected Amy in escaping her pursuer (and had her meet a great "tough guy" protector in our new neighborhood -- they call him "the Russian"), gave Andrea favor with a different worker at the bureau, and got things done and us home safely in the end. Lessons in patience, you think?
Number Two: Getting extensions on our tourist visas today. We had hoped to get this done yesterday as well, but showed up just a few minutes too late to get a number in the line for that day after the ordeal with the licenses. SO, back at it first thing this morning, we were number 5 in line. Woohoo! This was a great experience in feeling like an outsider among other people who have a better idea of what's going on than you do, and don't want to tell you the secret rules of society, or don't understand that you don't know them: where should you wait, when do you know that it's your turn, where do you get the mysterious stamps that we didn't know we had to have, etc.? How humbling! After only and hour and half, we were on our way and hit the worst traffic jam we've been in here. Something was on fire on the highway, the police had close the on ramp where we (and apparently 1/2 of San Jose) needed to get on, and we fought traffic for over an hour to leave the area we were stuck in. After all that, we still made it back to school in time for grammar class!
Praise God for small victories! We're looking forward to a three day weekend, as we don't have school on Monday due to a holiday to celebrate the annexation of the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica. More good news: schools here will reopen next week after being closed this week due to the swine flu. No more kid juggling and hopefully the flu risk is subsiding!
Blessings,
Andrea (and the Gang)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comments:
I HAD TO GET MY VISA EXTENDED TOO!!! I KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN! seriously, so many color-coded, numbered things. they gave me one number on a 3x5 card and told me to wait until it was called... there was one set of numbers blinking on a screen, some being called with letters after them, and also people were being called by name. i had no idea what to listen for or watch to know when i should go up... increible.
p.s. my blog (also the garcias, sort of) is abbybarr.wordpress.com
Post a Comment