Our house

Finally updating with pictures of the house. 

So, it is a 3 bedroom, 2full bath, and 2 half bath house.   I'll take outside pictures later and post them another time because right now, there are people in the park across the street.  

I'll start with the back yard.  It is a decent size backyard with a pool, grass, and some plants/trees.   We moved here just as winter was ending, so we've been watering the grass and slowly it is getting greener.  They are having a big drought problem here, so it is going to take awhile.  We have palm trees with some sort of fruit on them that the possums like to eat at night.  It is getting pretty hot, so I'm excited that we will be able to use the pool soon.   The garage has an awning that opens up to provide shade to the patio area and the doors completely open, so we can entertain in that space as well. 

Next, there is the living room.  This is Liam's terror zone as daily it is covered in cracker crumbs, paper towels, and toys.  The suitcase at the end contains most of his toys for now.  He likes to climb in and out of it, so I suppose it is a toy in and of itself. It is a pretty big living room, and it looks pretty funny since we only have a leather loveseat in there right now.  More to come in time.  The entertainment system is built into the wall. 

We have a half bath at the bottom of the stairs

The next room is the dining room, which as you can see, we haven't used at all!  In the next couple of weeks we will be buying a dining table and chairs. 

The kitchen is a good size with a lot of storage.  Everything here is gas, so that has taken a little bit to get used to.  There have been quite a few overcooked dinners in the first couple of weeks! 

The garage is more of an extra living room than an actual garage.  It is part of the house and has another half bath plus additional storage. There are doors from both the kitchen and dining room that enter into the garage.  The rectangular thing at the end of the garage that is built into the wall is the grill (parilla).  Bill is going to try to fire it up sometime in the next week or so! 

Then we go upstairs (2 small flights that Liam loves to climb up when we let him).   The first full bathroom is Liam's and he LOVES his bathtub and bidet (but we don't let him play in that!).    

Then there is his room, which is full of toys and a sleeping monkey.  We found him a crib and are buying it this week.  Wasn't easy to track one down!

Then it is Bill's office and Bill in his natural element. 

Our room is quite big and has a small balcony overlooking the backyard.  Will be nice on warm spring/summer nights to sit out there with a glass of wine and Bill.   We have a TON of closet space, which I can always make use of.  Sink is outside the second full bathroom, which is pretty convenient. 

That is all for now!  More pictures and posts to follow soon.

Starting to feel like home

Once my phone is charged, I'll post another entry with some pictures and details of the house (and if you video call me on google hangout, I can give you the official tour!)  ;)

We are still loving Cordoba, and it keeps getting better as we get more settled in.  Our new house is about 1 km away from the main street, which is pretty similar to any of the squares in  Somerville or Cambridge.    It's great.  We have a very large supermarket, a produce place, a couple of butcher shops, some bakeries, cafes, restaurants, shops...pretty much everything we need right within walking distance.  Now Andy, pay special attention to this.  Cars do not stop for pedestrians.  Even at cross walks.  If you want to cross, you need to make sure you have a CLEAR path to do so.  Even if a car is approaching, they won't stop to let you go.   Bill and I are more chicken than the Argentinians and we end up waiting at crosswalks long after others have crossed.


On Saturday we went to the zoo in Nueva Cordoba.  Quite a hike, especially since mom and dad were sick!!   Liam really enjoyed it though!  They had several species that we hadn't seen before, as they were mostly unique to Argentina, The Amazon, and a couple of other places in South America.  Liam loved looking at all the different fish at the aquarium!

Today Liam really started to stand up on his own for longer periods of time.  I guess he'll be walking pretty soon!    Will update more later but time to take advantage of Liam's nap time and get some studying done! 

We made it through a week!

We've been here an entire week, and my love for this keeps growing.   Liam and I got "lost" for about an hour and a half the other day and it was pretty fun to roam around the city trying to figure out where we were going.  The area reminds me a lot of Europe with the way the streets are set up with shops, kiosks, markets, and the general structure of the buildings.  It's really pretty and I can't wait for the flowers and trees to start blooming.  To the side is a picture of Tweety, the place where I have been buying fruits and vegetables.  Everything here is locally grown, and the taste and the quality of the produce reflects that.   They don't use nearly as many chemicals or pesticides as they do in the US, so produce doesn't last as long here.  That is taking some getting used to and  I have to make sure not to overbuy.  (I promise I won't turn into a crunchy granola person).  Unfortunately, they are in a pretty severe drought here, so the selection is pretty small.

The other day, we learned that everything sold in Argentina must have some component made here.  Which has made food shopping interesting as Doritos are pretty much the old brand that I recognize from the States.  Trial and error...especially for pasta sauce since a certain picky eater doesn't like chunky tomatoes!

While I can't really complain about the government here, since back home it seems to have shut down, they do practice some interesting things here.  For instance, they subsidize the Big Mac because of the Big Mac index, and they want their costs appear relatively low as compared to the rest of the world.  It would then appear that the peso here is doing well, instead of terribly (the unofficial exchange rate right now is 9.5:1)   Which works in our favor at least.   We could get a full time housekeeper/nanny for $400 pesos a week, which is about $42 a week.   I tried to convince my friend to move down and be Liam's nanny, but I don't think the $42 was that enticing.  The government also owns the broadcasting stations, so during a big soccer match, there were little government propaganda pop ups showing up. Weird.

Bill's lunch is getting cold so I'm heading back to the house.  Hopefully internet has been installed by now and I can update tonight with pictures of the house and other happenings.  So much to tell!   Chao!

First couple of days continued

This morning we woke up, and since Bill had to work, Liam and I went off to get some breakfast and walk around.  There is something oddly freeing about roaming around an unfamiliar city with no real destination in sight.  Since my cell phone can only pick up wi-fi at the moment, I had to pay close attention to the streets and which direction I was going in.  Anyone that knows me knows that sitting down to eat alone (or in this case with an almost 10 month old) isn't really my cup of tea, so sitting down at a restaurant for some OJ (which I don't drink), a cafe, and a couple of medialunas wasn't really appealing to me.  I ended up wandering into a kiosk (a bodega) to buy some Coca Cola Light to wake me up.  But to my surprise and joy, they had a Nescafe machine where I could get a vanilla cappuccino!  It may still be piping hot, but at least it is a bit sweeter.  So armed with my cafe and a couple of bottles of water, Liam and I ventured on.  We walked for about an hour and a half, stopping to pick up some pastries for Bill and some fruit and veggies from a store called Tweety.  And yes, tweety bird's silhouette was on the store front.

After relaxing at home for a bit, we decided to head to the bus stop to take the bus to look at the apartment.  Not as easy as it sounds. They apparently do not believe in bus maps here, so we had to look up the location online.  It wasn't far from the apartment, but we quickly learned that buses do not stop at every stop unless you are standing out and waving your arm around.  Bill and I didn't realize this and our bus blew on past.  We ended up taking a taxi.

The house is great. Two floors, 3 bedrooms, and a lot of space.  There is a park across the street and there is a street filled with restaurants and shops about 3/4 of a mile away.  The only weird thing was it doesn't come with a fridge.  Regardless, I think we are going to take the house.  After meeting with the realtor (I need to remember they do not do hand shakes here and instead do hugs and a kiss on the cheek) Bill and I ventured to the main street to explore and find the bus home.  1.5 hrs later and we still hadn't found the bus stop.  We asked a bus driver who had just gotten off the bus and turned out we could have taken any of the buses we'd seen go by during that time.  Again, with no actual bus map, we had to pay attention to our surroundings and got off where we were walking around yesterday to shop.  On the walk back, we found the information spot we'd spent all day yesterday looking for.  It was literally in an area we had walked around 5 times.  Oh well, now we know.  Bill also found the stand that sold the bus passes.

So now we are resting our feet after eating some epanadas, pizza, and milanesa completa con papas fritas while drinking some delicious Cabernet from Mendoza.  It was about 16 pesos....i.e. less than 2 bucks.

I hope that last line is enough to tempt our friends and family to come visit!!

The first couple of days

     I'm sitting here with a tummy full of Ser Pomelo Rosado sin azucar y calorias, Coca-Cola light, and medialunas.  My legs are sore from all the walking and I'm ready to take a siesta.  So far, I love it here.

       We woke up yesterday and realized we needed to venture out and pick up some close toed shoes for me, and a sweatshirt for Bill.  On Bill's adventure around the area the day before, he came across a mall nearby so we headed there.  First stop, desayuno (breakfast).  The flights were starting to catch up with us and while Liam was babbling away in his stroller, Bill and I were slugging along.   We wound up at Burger King in the food court because there was a short line, they had pictures, and we knew for sure they were serving breakfast.  Dos cafes and 4 medialunas sounded like a great breakfast to us!
       So the coffee here is STRONG.  Bill loves it.  I added two packs of sugar and had to wait for it to cool down before I could drink it.  As someone who used to live on large iced flavored Dunkin Donut coffees, these hot and small but powerful cafes are going to take some getting used to.   Medialunas are like croissants, but much sweeter.  I can tolerate about 1.  Although, this morning I bought Bill one that had dulce de leche on top with powdered sugar.  I could probably have about 10 of those!
      Hyped on caffeine and pastries, we ventured around the mall in search of clothes.  The malls tend to have more upscale stores and didn't really fit our needs. We stopped in at Nike to look at sweatshirts and realized they are more expensive than in the US!   We left the mall in search of bus passes  and started walking around all the small streets in the city.  There are boutiques everywhere and I found some Tom like shoes and then we found a discount mall where Bill got a sweatshirt and Tshirt.  No bus passes though.
     We walked around for almost 3 hours trying to find bus passes.  They don't use the term billetes for tickets, or autobus for bus.  There goes my limited Spanish.  One place told us a name for them, but still no luck.  We finally called it a day after we had walked up and down Avenue San Martin about 10 times looking for various places we had been told sold them.
   Turns out, we need a tarjeta (card) for the RedBus.  The woman whose apt we are staying in bought us some and helped us figure out how to get to the house we are going to look at today.
   Bill looked at the house last night and really liked it.  We are looking at it tonight and hopefully will get it.
   We ordered delivery last night.  The restaurants don't open until about 9 oclock so it is a weird adjustment to eating on that schedule. Very delicious Italian food here.

Since this posting is getting quite long, I'll save today's adventures for another one.

We have arrived

After about 30 hours of travel, we are happily settled into our temporary apartment.  It is in Nueva Cordoba and seems to have a lot around.   It should be an exciting week wandering around and looking for our own place.

Liam was a champ during the journey here.  He slept during take off and most of the flight from Boston to Miami, had fun there during our extended layover (thanks thunder and lightening with heavy rains) and then slept pretty much the entire overnight flight from Miami to Santiago.   We had a fairly long layover in Santiago and he cruised around the terminal entertaining people.  Quick flight from Santiago to Cordoba and he only started to get annoyed during the descent because he wanted OUT of his car seat.

We were the only flight landing in that terminal, so we flew through the passport check...and then our luck turned for the worst.  While in Boston, we found out our flight to Miami was delayed significantly.  Since we were at the airport so early, we were easily able to change our flight and were assured that our EIGHT pieces of luggage, including Bill's desktop, would be transferred to our new flight.  So, we wait at the baggage claim and notice our entire flight has already picked up their bags and has moved to Customs. The conveyor belt is empty except for a lonely blue suitcase going around and around and around.  Turns out, our bags were never moved to the new flight.  Actually, we aren't really sure what happened to our bags since the area we were didn't have access to a computer.  I'm hoping/assuming that they will be here tomorrow or the next day.  Thankfully the head jefe at the customs area agreed to bring our bags directly to us, vs us having to go back to the airport.

So now Liam is sleeping in his car seat since his pack and play was checked at Logan.  At least he is used to it by now.   Bill is out getting some empanadas and wine.  Tomorrow, we shall explore and look like out of place tourists  in sandals and short sleeves because to them, 50 degrees means scarves and hats :)  At least Liam will be nice and warm thanks to Bill's wonderful friend and husband who met us at the terminal, and when they realized our luggage had not arrived they went home, picked up some of their daughter's old clothes, and brought them to our place.

In one week...

...we will be hanging out in the airport at Miami, hopefully with a sleeping baby, awaiting the long flight to Santiago.

It's crazy to think that just 6 months ago, Bill and I were looking at houses trying to figure out where we wanted to buy and start to raise our family.  Narrowing it down to a nice starter house, I was beginning to wrap my head around the idea of being proper homeowners, with a back yard, driveway, and *eek* being responsible for home repairs and yard work.  And then, in the course of a 5 minute conversation, that all changed.  I'm pretty sure most people thought (and still think) Bill and I are crazy for moving down to Cordoba for a year so Bill can set up a new office for his company.  Not only am I in the middle of getting my RN, but we also have an adorable little baby, who was born in November.  And yet, here we are, a week out from out flight.  I start class tomorrow (thankfully  my program has some online courses for GE classes) and our apartment is half packed.

In the past couple of weeks, I've realized how fortunate Bill and I are.  Our friends have been encouraging all along the way and have been incredibly helpful and supportive.  Bill and I have amazing families who have helped us out tremendously by watching Liam and helping us pack, organize, and get our affairs in order.  To say that I'm sad to leave everyone behind is an understatement.  While I know the 2.5 months that we'll be gone before we come back for Christmas will go by quickly, it is still bitter sweet and a bit scary to leave everyone behind.   Luckily, Bill and I have found ourselves a very welcoming ex-pat group in Cordoba that is active on Facebook.  If people are anything like they are online, I think we will be very happy down there.

So in one week, our lives are going to be completely different.  But I am looking forward to this amazing opportunity I have, not only for my own personal growth, but also for the new adventure I'll be embarking on with my new family.  La vida es buena.