Paperwork will be the death of me.

Today the plan was simple. Go to the Brazilian equivalent of Social Security/IRS, show them our newly attained temporary registration cards and get our CPF. The CPF allows you to do all kinds of business transactions, from renting an apartment to buying furniture and electronics. All necessary things to do. It was supposed to take less than two hours for all of us to do it. In fact, Antenor was so confident of that he made an appointment at 10.

So as we walked up the steps this morning, I looked down at my little card and discovered they had put my maiden name on it. Easy mistake, since my name change on my passport is just from a little amendment in the back, but a major one. Ron and Antenor assured me there was no problem, I could get it changed later. So we headed in and got in the first line-about 30 people. We made it to the front and after a bunch of dialogue I didn´t understand, we received a slip of paper with a number. We headed into a big room to wait with everyone else. Finally our number was called and we headed to the appropriate window. The man at the window took one look at our stuff and disappeared with it. I looked around and the rest of the team (who had gone ahead of us) are making progress. Our man finally returns and Ron also appears to translate. The man was not going to let us have our CPFs. And then he told the woman who was working on Matt and Mary Virginia´s not to give them theirs either. We went back and sat down and waited for everyone else. Soon Randy and Jenn arrived with the same problem. Keith and Stacey, on the other hand, were being served coffee by the lady helping them. So the Parkers got theirs, but the rest of us didn´t. We were told that before we can apply, we must go to the bank and pay 4,50 R$. That´s less than two dollars. But we had to go pay it and then make an appointment for Monday to get our CPFs. We then headed to the bank where, surprise surprise, we waited again. One hour later, we had all paid and we were good to go as far as getting our CPFs. Next week. (One fortunate thing- normally it would have taken four hours to pay at the bank!) So Monday morning, I will go change my name on my card and we will go try again to get our CPFs.

In other news, Travis and Alicia will arrive on Wednesday!!! We have missed them so much!