Residency: Achievement Unlocked!

we're officially here to stay

still hard to believe that we live in this beautiful place

What’s up, y’all!

It’s true! The Paraguay government has been gracious enough to grant us Temporary Residency for the next two years! 🥳🎉

It really wasn’t that difficult of a process, mostly time-consuming. But we’ve got plenty of time on our hands these days, living at the slow, tranquilo pace of Paraguay.

Next up is to obtain the cédula, which is a national ID card. When we went to the city to pick up our residency cards, we also started gathering the documents to acquire the cédula. We had a second objective of getting the reports needed to transfer the title of the truck into our name. Apparently, to do that, you need a report from the tax department that you don’t owe any taxes, and a report from the alimony department that you don’t owe any alimony.

The tax report was easily obtained, but the alimony report - not so much. We got the “Palace of Justice”, where the department is located, but were denied entry because gnob was wearing shorts. So we took a break, and went to find pants. Lo and behold, next to the clothing store someone recommended to us, there was a rooftop sushi bar!

view from the sushi bar

We haven’t had sushi in months - living in the countryside of a landlocked country makes it a little difficult to find seafood. So we enjoyed the air conditioning and the fish, and then went to try our luck again at the Palace of Justice.

This time, we were told that it was going to take at least three hours to get the paperwork we needed, and it was far too close to the end of the day for them to permit us to enter. I’m sure you can imagine how happy gnob was at this point. 🤬😂

So we went back to collecting the documents needed for the cédula. We obtained a couple of them, and the next phase was to get them stamped at two different places. Well, we went to the second place first, and they wouldn’t stamp it because we did it out of order (though nowhere in the paperwork does it say there’s a certain order!)

We were really cranky and hot at this point, so we just went home. We’ll go back next week and try again. It will be a much better trip, because yesterday, gnob finally got all the correct parts shipped here and we have air conditioning in the truck now! Of course, we’re only a couple of weeks away from fall now, but better late than never! 😁

It’s been a good learning experience for him trying to source these parts, because by the end of the year he’ll be opening his shop here! Sounds like he wants to focus on air conditioning and electrical problems, and there is a real need for that here. You think it’s hard to find a good mechanic where you live, it’s extra hard here. So I don’t doubt he’ll have a lot of customers. The word’s already getting around about him - people are waiting for his shop to open!

And where will this shop be, you might ask. Well, let me tell you. Though we had terrible luck last week with getting documents in the city, we received some good news, too. You may recall a property we looked at months ago that we fell in love with. But we weren’t sure if we could afford it. You can read about it here:

¡Más chipa por favor!

It turned out, we couldn’t afford it, because we’d also need to build a house, and there just wasn’t enough money in our budget. However, in the months since then, the owner has had a change of heart, and agreed to sell it to us for our asking price!

Now, of course, none of this is final yet, so I’m trying not to get too excited about it, but y’all, seriously. I love this property, with all of the mango trees, and a shop for gnob. It’s beautiful, and I’ve been running past it twice a week for months now and wishing it was mine. And it may soon be!

I’m sure I’ll have more news on that later. But speaking of running, I’ve also fallen in with a group of women that lift weights together, so I’ve been going to the gym three times a week with them. It’s been excellent for my Spanish and Guarani, because of course none of them speak English. Working out is a universal language, though, and we have a great time together.

my new tribe

I went for a walk today, and the abuela next door grabbed me on my way back and dragged me into her kitchen to feed me. I sure do love living here! We both do, and hopefully soon we will have a house where you can come and visit us, and see for yourself what a wonderful place this is. I have no regrets, it was a great decision to move here. I feel like we’re part of a community that cares about each other, something I sadly hadn’t felt for a long time in the United States.

Okay, one more picture of food before I go. This is a picada.

sausage, carne, mandioca

Thanks for reading this week’s update! Feel free to use the button below to leave a comment or ask a question. We love to hear from you!

Have a great week!

---

Parting Thoughts

---

Did You Know?

You can like and comment on these stories by using the links below. We’d love to hear from you!

We’re not just on YouTube, we’re also on Instagram!

listening to:

our neighbors play this song over and over - I love that everyone here plays music all of the time. In fact, some other neighbors were jamming to AC/DC the other day - they told me “they’re the best!” 😂