Fighting The Man

Today, everything started working out, all of a sudden. I had tried to make a money transfer a few days ago from my account in the US to my account here, but it got held up. I went to the bank yesterday, and they sent me to another branch. I expected to get jerked around a lot when I went to the other branch today, because that seems to be standard operating procedure at a lot of “customer-service” oriented placed around here. The whole transfer was a problem, though, because tomorrow I had to pay for some furniture and I car I bought, and I had expected to have the money a few days ago. I was kinda shitting a brick worrying about it, too.
Anyhow, I went to the bank, and the guy there was actually nice…No, not just nice; he was REALLY nice. His name, let it be known, was Hugo Moreira, and he is a great man. He made some calls for me (while I and other customers waited there) and figured out that it was being held up somewhere because I needed a justification to transfer that much money. So then, he actually sat down with me and typed a letter for me on his own work computer, and explained the whole process to me. He also made copies for me using the copy machine at his office! Let me explain the significance of this: if you ask for a copy here in any place that isn’t expressly a copy shop, you’re liable to get a stern “No,” an angry frown, and possibly even a bullet to the heart. Then, he went to the back of the office and faxed my letter to the head office. Finally, he came back and called the head office to confirm they had received it, and told me that the money would be cleared by 2:30. He said if it wasn’t, I should come back and talk to him.
At this point, I was starting to wonder what the fuck was going on. I thought I might be on one of the hidden camera shows, and was starting to wonder if I’d show up on tomorrow’s episode of Sabado Gigante. Then, something almost just as strange happened.
I left the bank and since I had some extra time (I had budgeted about 2 hours for bullshit bank tasks, but it really only took about 45 minutes), I decided to go to the Civil Registry. Angela and I had made a trip to San José last week to request that they get off their asses and finally inscribe our legal marriage, making it official. Until they did that, we couldn’t talk to a priest, I couldn’t apply for my permanent residency, and she couldn’t apply for her US visa. Plus, it had been four months, which seemed like a long damn time for about 10 lines of data entry. So, we filled out a request form, and they told us that it’s be inscribed my May 31. “Yeah, right,” we both said as we left, and we fully expected to have to go back to the capital at some point this coming week to bitch at them again, but when I went to the branch in San Ramón, it was inscribed! Everything was coming up Milhouse!
Anyhow, I know this is probably not that interesting for people not directly involved, or for people who don’t live in Costa Rica, but I just had to mention it, since it’s always such a joy when The System works for you (even if it takes enough poking and prodding to kill a steer).
So, I’ll write some more stuff later, but I just wanted to say that tomorrow I’ll have furniture and a car! And more importantly, since we’ve now officially met with a priest in Palmares, we have an official day and place for the wedding. It’ll be on July 7th in Zaragoza, Palmares, at 3:00 pm. To get you in the mood for some Weddin' Visitin', I'll attach this picture of the church in Zaragoza. I took it a few weeks ago, when it was pretty cloudy. That's one reason that it's in black and white. The other reason is that black and white is always classier:




Hope to see you all there!

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