Michael: Three's a Charm?

The morning choir
Of buses, birds, cows, insects,
And dogs needs practice.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

We have temporarily struck out. The Caja de Ahorro bank in Bugaba; the only bank in the area that will give new housing construction loans, requires that we have our permanent visa cards and our last year’s income tax before we can open an account. Right now we only have our temporary I.D. cards. We should have our permanent cards in a couple of months.

In the meantime, we’ll contact our lawyer and ask her for the letter that Banistmo requires in order for us to open a checking account there. They won’t give us the loan we need, but having a checking account there will eliminate some minor difficulties.

But it wasn’t all bad yesterday. Yes, we were crammed on the bus like standing sardines, but at least it was one of the larger buses, so I could stand up straight instead of hunched over. And we were lucky to get on the third bus that went by. For reasons unknown to us, it was unusually busy at the bus stop yesterday.

And when we got off the bus at what we thought was going to be the closest stop by our house, Berards Market, it was raining steadily. Sometimes the bus’s last stop is Berard’s and sometimes it’ll go a little further up the road. We haven’t figured out yet how to ask where the final stop will be, but that’s another story.

But just as we left Berards, a young man with two kids in the back of his car pulled up and offered us a ride. His name is Tito, and it turns out he’s our neighbor just two doors down. We didn’t recognize him because he’s new to the area. But he recognized us and very generously offered us a ride home. Like us, he’s renting and going to build his home nearby, though he’s a step ahead of us as he already has purchased land.

That’ll be our next step. And stepping in that direction, I’ll make another phone call to my TSA loan officer and hopefully overcome whatever communication barriers we’ve been having.