We’re Official!

We just went down to the police station this morning to get our Tarjetas de Identificación para Extranjeros (our foreign national identification cards). After all of the pain and suffering we went through to sign up for the cards, actually receiving them was anticlimactic. We went to the station, went directly to the waiting room (no sitting outside in the cold this time), waited about five minutes, and were handed our cards. It was that simple. Until we got the cards, I hadn’t realized how much it had been weighing on my mind. We’re now good to stay in Spain until October 31 2009 (although the money won’t last that long). We’re good to leave the country for other foreign excursions without being worried about getting back into the country. We don’t have to carry our passports around all the time (although I probably still will, at least for a while). It’s not Spanish citizenship, but it’s a much more secure status than we’ve had up to now.