Excuse 1. . .

There are plenty of pictures on the Web for a Costa Rican cedula card (though why anyone would put them up on the net is beyond me). It's kind of like a social security card/national medical insurance card, etc., all rolled into one.

Last week, after 5-plus years in Costa Rica, we became permanent residents, equivelant to a green card in the U.S. This followed 2.5 years of being a rentista (temporary resident) which required us to exchange a good chunk of dollars into colones monthly and another 18 months before that to become rentista.

When all was said and done, it was around 4 years of waiting for the bureaucracy to wend its way through to approve us.

We had our final appointment last week and spent about 5 hours waiting in line and 10 minutes posing for pictures and signing our new cards; all in San Jose, about 3 hours away.

Long, tedious process but we're done with it now, thankfully, and no more hoops to jump through.