Last Night In Uruguay

It's my last night here in Uruguay. The bags are packed, well almost packed, I am doing some laundry. Cashed in all of my pesos for those funny all green bills. I put my Out of Office reply on at work although I plan on going in for a few, returm my BlackBerry and say my goodbyes. Then I have to come home and wash the sheets and towels that came with the "Welcome Kit".

On a good note I found out my Business Class upgrade request came through. Because we use American Airlines so much they provide upgrade coupons to my employer and they dole them out as they see fit, but for the most part nobody ever seems to get to use them. I wasn't expecting it to come through but I was blessed.

I'll post a few updates while I am home in the USA. If I get a wifi connection maybe an update at an airport.

Cold, windy and raining

I wish you could hear the wind howling outside right now 35+mph winds and chilly, around 48F.

It has been like this all day. So glad it's warm inside!

No Money For You!

I went to the mall to get some cash from the ATM, or so I thought. I went to every ATM in the mall, they were all out of cash.

There are 2 ATM's by a bank. I was trying to get cash out but it was repeating in a woman's voice with a Brit accent that it was out of order. The girl trying the other ATM next to me said something about it not working and left. I thought it was just mine, so I went to the other one and displayed on the screen was "Would you like to make another transaction", and I realized she hadn't cancelled out her sesssion, I pressed "No" and out comes her card! I look all over for her and don't see her. I took the card next door to the bank and after finding someone who spoke English (And even then still had problems explaining the situation) was able to hand the card over to someone with the bank.

Don't Throw Anything Away

That's what the lady cleaning my apartment told me before she started. I put a small box together with things we couldn't take, mostly food and some odds and ends and told her she could have that.

Well there was an old bed sheet and a bathrobe that we meant to use as rags but never did, so I told her that I was throwing it away as the material was not good for rags and she told me "Don't throw anything away, you might think it's junk, but somebody here can do something with it". I'm glad I heard that from her. We American's are in such a throw everything away mindset.

We were taking something to the trash, an old plastic bin that was a planter, it was breaking apart and it was junk. As we approached the dumpster she said "Let me make sure that nobody is sleeping in there". That wasn't a joke, it's cold and someone could have been sleeping in it.

The Moment I had Been Waiing For

It was the day to see how many Mas points I had and what nice thing I can redeem the points for.

You might recall how we thought getting one of these discount cards would be so difficult, when I eventually mustered up enough Spanglish to ask for one you would have thought I had one the lottery.

The grocery store keeps the items that you can redeem the points for behind a showcase, everything from kitchen gadgets to cheap electronics. I was like a kid in a candy store as I looked at the many items calling out to me "Doc, pick me, Doc, pick me!" Would it be the leather matte kit or maybe even a new digital camera, who knows.

So I went to the store to pick up some items, went to the customer service counter and asked the girl how many points I had "ciente dos", she says. I don't know much Spanish, but that much I knew, 102 and then I wasn't able to make out everything she said but she was shaking her head no and I heard the word "nada".

So I left Disco dejected, no parting gift from the grocery store we spent so many thousands of pesos at. They did have some good meat!

Packed Up

Over the course of the past three days the sound of packing tape ragging across boxes has been the sound that was heard in my apartment. Moving boxes filled every corner ready to go down the elevator as the king sized bed went over the balcony, much like the way it came up.

These guys do a great job and they are so familiar with doing moves with my employer they already know what goes and what stays pretty much. Fortunately one of them spoke decent English otherwise it may have been a little difficult.

We learned valuable lessons from our previous pack out and also from people at work. This time we didn't get rid of as much dry goods or for that matter unopened non=perishable food stuffs. What did we do? Put them in our coolers! The packers don't care whats in the coolers, they are just going to wrap them and put them in boxes.

Overall the haredest part is just making sure that you don't leave to much behind as you can mail things along but ideally you don't want to. You have to figure that you get to check in 2 bags for travel (3 for business class) so you need your bags packed before they start packing as well.

Now the clean up begins, some fun!

Nice relaxing day - redux

Just returned from a nice jog and walk on the beach. The beach is only around 1/4 of a mile, my guess, so it was a few back and forth treks. Mind you there are longer beaches here but it would be a decent workout just getting there.

The weather is beautiful, sunny and in the 60's. Quite the departure from the colder weather we have been having.

Our cats have acclimated to the weather change and they appear a little more fluffier these days.

The Round Up

I haven't been posting nearly as much as I should. My Internet service has been worse than usual, horribly slow. This has made streaming television and movies horrible. We are subscribing to a U.S. VPN service that assigns us a U.S. based IP address thus allowing us access to view on demand shows on NetFlix, NBC.com etc that otherwise does not let you view from other countries. It costs $15 per month but being that we don't have cable or satellite TV it's worth it.

Getting cold here! I have to wear my heavier jacket and knit cap on my walk to work in the mornings. The heat is on at the apartment which is good and bad. Good because it's warm, bad because we can't control the temperature and sometimes it gets too warm, we then open the doors.

I saw the saddest stray dog at the bus stop this morning on my way to church. There usually is a few stray dogs around the mall in the morning, this one really looked like it would make someone a good companion if it got cleaned up and a nice meal. The are so many stray dogs here, often times when you see them they have collars on, they were somebodys pet at one time.

Colder and colder

It's 9:46PM, the wind is howling outside (30+mph) and 52F. So maybe not exactly freezing, it sure is cold. Had put away my wind breaker and take out a heavier jacket and knit cap.

Weather Report

I can't trust the weather forecasts at all!  If I were to believe them today would have been a stay in bed day, rainy and dreary.  Instead it's nice and warm and the sun is shining bright with just a few puffy clouds in the sky : )

Yesterday a fog rolled in and covered everything, it was a little brisk, maybe sweater weather at most.

Another Three Day Weekend

Yet another three day weekend and it started off with a half day Friday for me. Not going to do much. It's getting cold, in fact the heat was turned on in the apartments today (The floor's are warm).

Till next time.

Yecky Day

Rainy and cold.  It has been getting dark earlier and earlier.  Sunset today at 5:53PM.  I expect a Daylight Savings Time change will be soon.

The Pile is Gone

Well the big pile of old computers by the engineering school is gone.  I saw were a small dumpster was dropped off and in a few days the mess was gone.   I don't know why it took so long to get rid of them, maybe it was an environmental hazard kind of thing.

Three Day Weekend Ends

The weekend is coming to a close, we didn't do anything and I take the blame for that, I should have planned well in advance.  But guess what?  We have another 3 day weekend coming up this month so I get another chance!

It was nice and warm all weekend, well, a little cool towards the evenings but otherwise very pleasent.

Nice to see the leaves changes colors and all over the sidewalks.  I should take pictures!

The Source Is Revealed

Many mornings I wake up to the sound of a scooter pulling away from the apartments, always around the same time, oh-dark-thirty.  For my non-military readers that's military jargon for pretty darn early in the morning, in this case around 5:30am.  The scooter sounds like it's groaning when accelerating, I can hear it go down the street.  I knew that someone must be deivering something, probably newspapers.  

Well on my way to the bus this morning I see a kid grab a stack of newspapers off of the back of a scooter and go inside an apartment building,  come out and got on the scooter, when he started it and pulled away I knew exactly where I had heard that sound before!  There was my culprit!

Bought my first art

Well that's not entirely true as we haev plenty of art, that's ours, but Chris picked them out. This one I picked out at the mercado del puerto. There are artists everywhere, this guy is setup inside the market. Usually the father is doing the selling, this time it was his son. I got a small piece done in pencil, crayon and paint. It's of a corner in the old city that captures tha architecture of the buildings and has a vendor and busses. I liked the busses.

It only cost $25 which was a deal. I'll take a photo of it sometime

More Bus Fun

Just when I barely got the "transbordo" thing down, we get on a bus and ask the guardo (Fair taker, some busses have them some don't, otherwise the driver takes the money and issues the ticket) for dos transbordos. Well out print the tickets and I look at them and don't see the word transbordo on them, so I hand them to him and explain that I wanted 2 transbordo tickets. He then points out the word "hora" (Hour) and that the passes are good for one hour. On the next bus I hear the guy in front of me say to the driver "un hora", and I realized, out goes transbordo tickets, new thing is 1 hour and 2 hour bus passes that allow you to ride on the same bus line as many times within 1 or 2 hours.

The comun (Common=regular) ticket is what you would usually get if you don't ask for something else.

Last of the warm days?

I had heard that it was supposed to get cold this weekend but looking at the weather forecast it's not going to be so bad, in the upper 60's. Today was a beautiful 77!

Sunset over the old city - Montevideo

Nice relaxing day

Spent a nice afternoon sunning on "the hill" with Chris and then lunch at al fresco at Rumi Bar. We then went to the amusement park for churros.

When we went to the hill around 2:00PM or so there was hardly a soul out, but as the hours picked up more and more people appeared on the rambla and such. I was really surprised at how packed the amusement park was.

Here is a picture I took around 2:00PM, this is a nice sunny day, around 80 and it's a ghost town. Most Uruguayans have gone out of town.