Still Coming to you from the Holiday Inn!

It has been a couple of weeks since I last posted and I believe I said something like "I hope the next time I post it will be from the house." Unfortunately here we are still in the Holiday Inn, however it has not been a bad couple of weeks. I met a new wife of one of the guys that works with Everette. Her name is Marsha and we really had a great time getting to know each other. Marsha and Carl are from Atlanta and she came down for 20 days as a trial with her job to see if it would work out for her to stay here. She connected everyday by Internet and things went very well so she will be returning in late April. Marsha was born in the US but grew up in Venezuela so she speaks Spanish fluently and English also. I finally had someone to get out with and discover the city. She helped me so much in getting things arranged for the house. I am starting to understand the way of life and living here. So many of the buildings here are plain and not very nice looking on the outside and there are high walls everywhere. But, I found out that behind those walls are beautiful courtyards and gardens that lead into the houses and apartments. That is the way the older buildings were built. The new construction is built more like in the US. Another thing Marsha helped me figure out is how to find things in the city. There are no super stores with one stop shopping here. There are different stores for everything. I wanted to buy a small sewing machine and make covers for the chair cushions. First we found out that there were no sewing machines to be bought here. The reason being that if you want something like that you go to a store where they make the cushions. Unlike the US, labor cost here is very low so it is cheaper to have things made than do it yourself. There is a store for curtains, one for rugs-carpet, one for plastic housewares (buckets, cleaning stuff, containers etc.) one for kitchen things and on and on it goes. Now that I am getting the hang of it I think it may not be so bad if we had to stay in the city. Today I even went in a taxi alone across the city, spoke Spanish well enough to talk with the drivers and all of the sales people in the stores! I am a long way from having a lengthy conversation but it is getting easier. We have moved some stuff in the house. The direct TV is hooked up and the TV even has a program to change the language to English. The Internet antenna has been installed and the wireless router is in but the connection is still dropping somewhere. Our plan is to be totally living in the house by Friday night. It will be so much better for Everette, he will not have such a long drive to do everyday, and he will be able to really relax when he is at home. Best of all we will be able to get our eating schedule back to normal, no more waiting until 9:00 for the restaurants to open. Today was a very good shopping day! One of the guys here told Everette this morning that last night he was in Jumbo (very small WalMart like store) and that they had some Kraft mayonnaise and Paul Newman ranch salad dressing. Well, as soon as Everette called me i was out the door because it is very rare you can find any US brands here. What you can find is on the international isle in the store. I rushed over there as fast as I could go by taxi, and was rewarded for my effort. There on those beautiful shelves I found 10 pints of Kraft real mayonnaise, 8 bottles of Paul Newman ranch dressing, 8 bottles of Hunt's ketchup, 5 cans of Hunt's roasted garlic and onion spaghetti sauce, 4 cans of Healthy Choice Clam Chowder (for Everette, eeewww stinky!), 4 cans of Healthy Choice Vegetable soup, 4 bottles of Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Cocktail and 5 small cans of Planter's Jumbo Fancy Cashews. It was quite a jackpot! Needless to say I bought every can! I was putting so many things in my cart people were stopping to look at what it was I was buying. There was a lady who started to reach for a jar of the mayonnaise and I started thinking, am I gonna have to wrestle her for that jar? All in all a very good day. More on life here in Argentina very soon with pictures! Love to you all, Dana