The Good and Bad of Guatemala City

On Monday I headed into Guatemala City with two goals. The first and most important was to pick up Clara's passport. Back in mid-December we brought Clara to the US embassy to register her for citizenship and get her documents. That was actually our second attempt to register her. The first time we made it about an hour down the road, only to be stopped by roadblocks and protests at our intersection with the interstate - absolutely no way through. So we had to reschedule. Regardless we finally made it to the embassy, only to be locked out for another hour due to more protests at the embassy. People were protesting what they see as the US taking advantage of their economy via "free trade". So we finally made it in, and after being made to feel like criminals in our own embassy, Clara's registration was accepted - then we had to wait at least 2 weeks to pick up her passport and birth certificate.

So, on Monday we went to pick it up. And, Success! It was much less of a hassle this time with no protests and no needing to prove that Clara is actually our daughter and a US citizen. Her passport picture is very cute and kind of funny to see with all the offical US embosments, etc. It is good for 5 years. We are imagining traveling when she is 4 years old and showing them a passport with a 3 month old picture on it!


Yay! I got my passport!

The bad news is that we went to Guatemalan migration to see if we could get an extension on our visa. The Guatemalan travelors visa is only good 3 months, so we either had to renew or leave the country. We renewed back in September after our first three months, and we had heard you could only renew one time. But because Clara is still pretty small and because we are volunteers and because the bishop of our diocese down here wrote a very kindly worded letter, we thought we might be able to renew again. But, Denied! They wouldn't do it. Some people told us that we should have handed them an unmarked envelope with money in it for a bribe and it would have gone fine. But other people have told us that the Colom government hired all new officials in migration to cut back on corruption. Rather than risk time in prison or encourage a system of bribary we accepted our fate and began planning a quick trip to Mexico.


Yay! My first trip!