Así es la Vida

Costa Rica is such a well developed, “modern” nation that you can sometimes forget that it really is a Third World country.  Today was not one of those days!

 

Now that we have our Residency Visas (Thank God!), we have to get special permission from the government to take our minor children out of the country.  We went to the Immigration Offices on Monday afternoon, as our lawyer suggested, with the papers she told us we needed, to make the request.  We should have seen it coming, really, I mean it all just sounded too easy!  We didn’t though (one of the days we’d forgotten the Third World thing), and we were surprised to learn that we needed two more things to apply for permission to take our kids out of the country.  We needed a copy of their birth certificates – stamped & certified – and passport size photos of each of them as well as the other documents the lawyer had told us about.  It sounds silly, but what can you do?  That’s the law!

 

So today Henry & I went back to Immigration.  We went in the morning, because the office where you request the copy of the birth certificate that they have on file is only open from 8 a.m. until noon.  We were so thankful that a friend from my Bible Study watched Jordan for us, because the whole process took 4 long hours! 

 

Some might call this a wasted day.  To be honest, we are tempted to do just that!  But, when you’ve lived in a Third World country for as long as we have, you learn to say, “Así es la vida” (“Such is life”)!