Yesterday, just after noon, I went into the nearby ATH (A Todo Hora, which is the Costa Rican version of “ATM”) to check my Scotiabank balance. Lo and behold, after two weeks of wrangling account, Swift, IBAN, and beneficiary numbers back and forth with the Bank of Montreal, my money finally arrived! I danced a little jig.

That led to a few furiously-dialled phone calls to arrange for another trip out to Grecia to finally pick up the car. This, I should add, ended up being yet another interesting chapter in my life living here in Costa Rica. ‘Cuz this is how I found out that u-turns are illegal here.

Trust me, this is a good one…

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This moving thing is no fun. Not at all. Yes, Costa Rica is a nice country, with nice people, and we’re arranging a very nice place to live, but the act of getting there is far more work than I could have imagined. We have to sort through red tape on how to move the cat (a still on-going issue), we have to get a proper will (finally) sorted out, and then there’s the issue of taxes.

There are times when I wish this world wasn’t so obsessed with money, so moving around wouldn’t be such a pain in the ass. Sadly, greed being what it is, life is complicated.

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