Well we are back in the big city. We are staying in a one bedroom apartment with a gal named Bridgette. She does not speak any English, but left us a few written notes with our breakfast this morning. She showed us tonight how a friend had helped her write them in English via text message. That must have taken them awhile! Bridgette is giving us her room and she has a little cot behind her dining table. We are happy because we can still walk to school and she has wireless Internet!!!
Being back in the city is so different than the estancia or the city of Colonia. It is loud. We are two floors up and from our room we see the Rio de la Plata. There are many people walking the Rambla. Young, old,runners, bikers and us. We are not sure where we fit into the mix yet. They really need to endorse a "pick up your dogs poop" law. Maybe I will start a campaign...
We had our three hours of school today. Allen is getting pretty good, not great but light years ahead of me. Our teacher Mateo helped Allen navigate the lavaderia. He dropped off our dirty laundry, 1 1/2 loads and we can pick it up tomorrow for $7.00. Notice how I now have Allen doing the laundry...ha!
While they were working hard translating the laundry, I was with Martha. Start paying attention to names here. I am not going to repeat who is who.
Martha is the owner of our school.
Claudia is the secretary and our two main teachers here are Mateo and Maria. We have also had Maru and Ximena as teachers.
Back to our day, Martha was helping me with arrangements for mom and dad and Em's visit. We are going to spend New Years Eve and New Years at the estancia. This is amazing and I cannot wait for it. Well, I don't want it to come too soon, but the anticipation is there already. This is gonna make their trip. The estancia and maybe croquette. Martha is also helping us with accommodations for our Colonia stay. We are going to stay in a brothel from the 1600's. That had better be the only time my dad and Allen stay the night in a brothel!
Our big project of the day (no, it was not homework) was we rented a car for 11 days. Martha called one place for us to get a price. Then we stopped by Hertz. Hertz pretty much laughed at us. It is high season, they have zero cars available. We took a cab right over to the place that Martha called. Normally the car would be regular season would be $900. High season $1200. But we are in the high high season that makes it $2000. It will be worth it though, we have a lot of trips to make and busses are hard enough for two, five plus luggage...no thanks!
One funny story, Allen noticed that our apartment door needed a few new screws on the lock. Off we go to the friendly ferreteria at the mall. This is the same place we went to three times for glue a few weeks ago. I thought they would roll their eyes and say a hail Mary when they saw us back, but actually we had a lot of fun. Allen was all ready with the words for longer and fatter. I could see Allen take a deep breath, then the guy behind the counter took a deep breath and we mustered through it. It cost 7 pesos and I counted to seven in Spanish and hardware guy counted in English. I was glad that he got five wrong, because I got seven wrong.
We also got a sim card for our telephone and the iPad. Thank goodness most businesses have a English speaking employee. We have a Uruguayan phone number now. To be truthful I got it mainly so Francisco could call me back regarding my hair appointment I am trying to set up with Juancho. Well I guess it can be used for other types of emergencies if need be, but I am thinking my hair appointment is emergency enough.
So to recap the day...school, rental car, accommodations for our family trip, sim cards, screws at ferreteria, laundry dropped off...pretty good day. We better rest tomorrow. I think we need to buy a couple of beach chairs and spend some quality homework time at the beach. That is code for I need to keep my suntan going.
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