Sports court

This week we saw a new sign down the street from our house announcing the opening of a new sports court.  Michael walked down the short side dirt street to take a photo.  We are always glad to see people taking initiative here!

Church blessing

A few weeks ago we received an announcement under our gate inviting us to a "church blessing event" for a church in our community that had bought new land and was moving.  The flyer and envelope were announcing the celebration service and asking for donations.  

The previous church building was made of steel roofing sheets nailed to wooden posts.  It was near our house on borrowed land, but they recently took it down and we weren't sure what happened to it.  A couple of weeks ago we found it being built next to the community soccer field!

Police records

As part of the yearly renewal process for our residency here in Guatemala, we went to the police station in a neighboring town to request documents showing our police record.  Fortunately, our records correctly showed that we are not guilty of any crimes!  Heather and Veronica waited in the car for Michael, who went to request the documents, and this was the view.  The police station is the nondescript gray building in the center of the photo.

Traffic jam

A couple of weeks ago we went shopping in town as usual, but the traffic was very congested.  In fact, on the way home, it took us 40 minutes just to get out of town, instead of the usual 5 minutes.  The main problem with traffic jams here are the old U.S. school buses and large 18-wheelers trying to navigate the narrow roads in town with 6-point turns at some corners.  This happens because the main highway that runs north-south through Chichicastenango goes through the narrow grid of streets that were created before cars existed here.

We later found out that the "traffic police," were absent because the town mayor called them off the job to help him with some other business.  Three of these officers direct traffic in the three main intersections in town rather than traffic lights.  We heard that there was a lot of frustration with the mayor over this issue!  And we found out how important those three traffic workers are!

House foundation

The boys poured the first section of our house foundation this week.  They did a great job digging and setting posts, then pouring the bottom concrete base.  Now they have five more sections to go, and then they have some foundation blocks to lay and columns to pour.

Christmas Eve fireworks

For the last ten years that we have lived in Guatemala, our family has enjoyed going outside at midnight on Christmas Eve to watch the fireworks display put on by many individual families.  The beautiful display lasts about 15 minutes. Now that we live on our property, we have a view of a wide area.  There were fireworks all the way to a mountain range in the distance!  Next, we will repeat the fun experience on New Year's Eve!

Immigration

We have had an interesting time trying to keep up with Guatemala's residency requirements.  We live 3 hours away from the Guatemala City immigration office, so each time we try to submit paperwork, we have to pay a courier to take the documents, as well as our passports and identification cards, in his private vehicle.  He then waits for the lawyer's assistant to stand in line at the immigration office and handle the transaction for us, and then the courier returns everything to us later that day.  

Earlier this year, before the pandemic hit, we tried to send our yearly paperwork.  The immigration office didn't accept it because we hadn't paid our newly required yearly fee.  So we tried to pay our fee, but the office closed for the pandemic while our lawyer's assistant was in line, and they didn't open again for several months.  Then we tried again, but they had introduced a new document required for the girls and wouldn't accept their fee without it.  So we paid to obtain those documents for the girls and submitted their fees.  Then, after finally paying our yearly fees, we tried to submit our paperwork again, which we had to completely redo because it was now more than 6 months old.  This time we were told we couldn't submit it because we had already paid our yearly fees, the opposite of what they told us earlier in the year.  Go figure.  Five trips to the immigration office and still no resolution to our yearly requirements!

The rules are often changing, and the information we receive from the immigration office seems to depend on which teller is asked or what day we ask!  Let's hope things work better in 2021!