all we want is a cedula

Zipporah does not yet have any official document. We applied in February to get a cedula for her, but it seems that they have lost the paperwork and we needed to start over again. So Yesterday we decided to get all the paperwork together and go apply again in the hopes that we will get it soon enough to go to Argentina in September. We had her birth certificate, a copy of the "acta", and all that we needed was to go to the local police station and get a "vida y residencia" basically a paper saying we actually live where we live. To get this we needed photocopies of the documents of 2 neighbors to testify. It is really a simple process... sometimes. Not this time. Travis had all the documents prepared, we were making a quick stop to get the document and then we would be on our way, 1/2 an hour max, Trav went in and they told him that because we were foreigners they had to come see our house to make sure we actually live there, they had to come talk to our neighbors, they had to fax interpol to make sure we weren't criminals, it would take at least 24 hours, if not 2 or 3 days. We have had to get this before and knowing it was bogus, Trav took a paraguayan lady in with him and tried again, all to no luck. So we went to another police station close by to talk to them. They were a little more honest and told us that was not necessary but they couldn't do the document for us because we lived out of their region. So once more we went back to the first station. We decided to ask for the document for Zipporah and because she is Paraguayan they don't need to do all those checks. The Paraguayan lady we had with us carried Zipporah in there and told the policeman that we needed the document for Zipporah and she is Paraguayan and they don't need to do all those checks. So he said he would be at our house in 1/2 an hour to check if that was where we lived. We said we would wait. So we sat and waited and they had it ready in 1/2 an hour. Trav asked if they wanted to go see our house to make sure we lived there, and waddayaknow.... it wasn't necessary. You just have to be a bit annoying and you can get what you want.

Now on to apply for the cedula. We went to one office and they said we needed to go to the central office, so we went to the center. It's a 3 story building with no elevators. Up 2 flights of stairs and they said we needed to talk to other people, so we talked to them and they said to go downstairs to another desk to hand in our paperwork. So after waiting an hour in line we handed in our paperwork, but because we wanted it soon we asked what we could do to hurry it up. She said to go find the help desk over there. So we looked at all the signs and did not see one that said help. So we went to the security desk and asked there. Well we needed to go up 2 flights of stairs across the floor and down 2 flights of stairs. So we did the guy listened to us and told us to go make a photocopy of a paper and bring it back soo... up 2 flights down 2 flights make the photocopy, up 2 flights down 2 flights, and he tells us to take this to the top floor. We went up to the top floor, that was only the archives, so we asked someone, nope you need to go down a hallway turn go up the stairs and then your there. We get there and they say no you need to go to the bottom floor to a different desk. So we go to the bottom floor and they say we need the signature of a man that was not there but if we go back tomorrow we can get it, and we might get the cedula already then... I hope so.

And whatever, maybe I'll lose weight from all the exercise.