Paperwork Saga

Living overseas involves endless paperwork. For the last 14 months we have been in a non-stop paper-shuffle to get our license plates. I will try not to bore you with the details, but let's just say that we have learned to long for the organized (if annoying) system of the US department of motor vehicles. Hearing "Now serving B 14 at windown number 6" would be music to our ears. In Tegucigalpa, there was a period of 6 months where there wasn't money to make new plates, so everyone had to go to a government office every 2 months to renew their temporary permission to drive without plates. You cannot imagine the line of people waiting. One day Mark waited for 8 hours in the line. And for an un-known reason the location of the office kept changing. So part of the frustration was the hunt to even find the office. A few weeks after we moved to San Pedro Sula, we learned that our plates were finally ready... in Tegucigalpa. So Mark drove 4 hours each way only to be told that our paperwork was not in order. For the last month, while trying to resolve the situation, we have been forced to drive without updated papers. The police pulled Monica over twice and threatened to impound the car. But really, they were just trying to get her to pay a bribe. We finally hired a lawyer to help us end the wild goose chase. So here's the tally: We waited in 14 different lines at 5 different offices, traveled to two different cities and paid several hundred dollars just to get our license plates. It was never a dire situation, just an on-going frustration of trying our best to live legally in a foreign country. It was a very satisfying feeling to screw the plates to our Honda this afternoon.