Letter, November 9, 1977

I’d been expecting you to write & send me the $500 from my bank account, but since nothing has gotten to me I decided to write to see if by chance you’d sent it & it got lost in the mail, etc. More likely you’ve just been too busy to write, but it’s also true that Costarican postal employees aren’t always honest & someone may have ripped off the letter to try & cash the check. So what-say if you let me know by return mail if you sent out a letter with the check more than 2 weeks before the date on this letter?

<Sofia & I went to the embassy today & presented the papers for her visa. Apparently everything was in good order because the woman just notarized Sofia’s application form & said we should come back Friday to pick up the visa. All told we spent about $70 getting it, at a time when we don’t have that much money, but once Sofia has permanent residence we can live in the U.S. as long as we want. Also, Sofia can live here & keep the visa by entering the U.S. once a year.> Anyway, whatever happens, the visa should be useful for a long time.

I’d hoped to hear from you concerning when Dad will be operated on, to decide when we should leave for the States, but since that wasn’t possible, we made our decision. As it turns out, Costa Rica had a border incident with Nicaragua & the two countries may break diplomatic relations, so we can’t count on being able to go through that country by land in January. Also, we’re getting the itch to go, so we decided to make the trip by plane & leave here December 15th. We’ll spend 6 days in El Salvador, and leave there December 21st for New Orleans and then Nashville. We plan to spend a day there to visit Marcia before leaving for Madison at 1:40 PM, December 23rd on Northwest #739. It looks like we’ll make it just in time for Christmas.

<Sofia & I are living with her family for the rest of our time here.> She & her mother wanted it that way, & it makes it easier for us to sell stuff, & send stuff ahead that we don’t use much. My job is not slacking off at all yet; looks like I’ll be working right up to the end. I just got put in charge of collecting a pair of corn samples (from test plots) just a week before we leave.

My nervousness is probably groundless, but the thing about my check getting ripped off in the mail is really on my mind. Please let me know what’s what as soon as you can.

Take care,

<Dean & Sofia>