90°F

Happy Thanksgiving to all my U.S. friends and family!

Here we are enjoying a rather warm day :)  Spent the morning with our co-workers and decided to walk back to where we were staying. I made it half way before crying "uncle" and asking Ivan to call a taxi. Whew! It's going to take me a little time to get used to the heat again.

Our trip back to Argentina was fairly uneventful. Aduana (customs) ended up making us pay import taxes on things that had been given to us as well as things we had bought (and had receipts for), which was disappointing but not surprising. The amount made us wince but we are thankful that at least all our luggage arrived intact!

Waiting to see if we'll be able to look at the car we might buy before heading to Sta. Rosa on Saturday. Learned after we got back that the car is (was?) actually in another province. But it sounds like the man we're dealing with traveled there yesterday to pick it up, and he might bring it today. But we've learned not to count on things like that. It might happen; it might not. Quien sabe?

We arrived Tuesday and that evening there was a science fair at the school our co-workers' daughters attend, so we went to that. During the last three years of high school the kids focus on a specific area of communication: print media, radio, audio/visual. One of their daughters was involved in a video project which was shown during the fair, and both had worked with partners to create a science project/display. Ivan was even briefly interviewed on the radio by two of the young people involved in that program.

Afterward we all went out to a pizza place we had never been to before, and I have to say it was delicious! I'm not normally fond of Argentine pizza (they tend to be a little skimpy for my taste) but the wood oven fired crust was loaded with toppings. This place sells it by the meter and the seven of us polished off an entire meter of pizza! We had four different kinds (25 cm of each) and my favorite, hands down, was Valenciana which had caramelized onions, pancetta, olives and two kinds of cheese.

We're staying in the apartment where we started out three years ago :) My Spanish tutor has a very nice walk-out basement apartment. She also loaned us her car for a few hours yesterday. We drove over to our lot and arrived at the same time our neighbor was getting home, so we had a chance to talk to him. He said some kids had tried to break in recently but he chased them off. They managed to knock a couple of blocks in, so that will have to be fixed, but we were going to reinforce that wall anyway. It's sure nice to have good neighbors who watch out for you!

The good news is that the new costanera (road along the river) is paved from Playa de Oro all the way to our street! The bad news is, it doesn't look like the city is doing anything any time soon about the squatters living nearby. We had understood those living in the shanty town were going to be relocated to a new community which the city had built outside of town -- a 400 unit "village" complete with a school. In Argentina the only way you can get squatters to move is by providing them an alternative housing arrangement. BUT it turns out that police and other municipality employees are purchasing the homes there. So we're trying to find out what, if any, plans are being made to move the squatters out.

We've enjoyed being back, and once we get some basic things taken care of, we'll head to Santa Rosa for a short break. We're both really looking forward to that!