If You Offer, They Will Come

This week's title could be taken from any conversation about us here in Argentina: Offer us a ride, we'll take it; offer us dinner, we'll take it; offer us toys, we'll take 'em; offer us sympathy, we'll take it. As one of a handful of families coming in to the neighborhood, we've have been very social and have made sure to let others help us when they offer. We have hosted as well and see the genuine giving nature of others in the last few weeks. We have also seen the need for us to pay forward the generosity to new families. It has certainly given us a new perspective. For example, our local sponsors stocked our shelves and refrigerator, have had us over for dinner multiple times, have provided much needed rides as we don't have a car and have truly been there for us. Another family arrived after us and were lucky to get a ride home from the airport. They arrived to a cold empty home and walked 8 blocks or so to McDonalds for dinner. We know which example we will follow.

Another week has passed and we have just as much stuff as we did last week. We were told last week that our air shipment was scheduled to be on a flight August 1st, so we've had all of our fingers crossed (which has made it difficult to type tonight) that we get a call tomorrow saying our things have cleared customs and are ready to be delivered. That would mean we would actually have our own towels, some sheets, our desktop, a printer, and lots more clothes. For those keeping score, we packed out of Denver 24-25 June, and have been lugging around our lives in suitcases ever since. We lugged them from Denver to Kearney, Nebraska to West Des Moines, Iowa to Oak Brook, Illinois to Poland, Ohio to Fairfax, Virginia (all the stops on our cross country drive) and now to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Needless to say, Candace would be happy to see a little change in the ol' wardrobe.

But more importantly, the kids have continued to excel during this time of great change. Not that they are saintly by any means (as you'll read below), but under the circumstances, we have been very much impressed by their ability to adapt and overcome. Should they receive such a compliment to their faces, they would even say 'gracias' now. Candace would say 'gracias' too, and she deserves the gaucho's share of the praise to date as the loving wife who has stayed home with 2 extremely bored girls, a 2-year old boy with no toys packed for him (they're in the air freight), and a newborn that seems to always want to eat. She has done so with patience and understanding... so she'll get extra steak at our next meal.

To illustrate the boredom, let me provide three examples. First, as I'm sure any curious 2-year old boy would do, Sam (the likely culprit but it cannot be confirmed due to lack of evidence, it just has his naughty fingerprints all over it) probably spent one morning looking for something to do. [Probable Sam thought process] "Alas, a small stick about 3 inches long... SCORE! What should I do with this stick? I could throw it in the garbage and mommy would call me a big boy. I could leave it on the floor and forget about it .3 seconds from now. I could use it as a log to impede Thomas the train. I know, there has to be somewhere I can put it. Look over there... Dad's laptop. There is a funny door on the side that opens that looks like you could put a card of some short in there, like memory or storage or graphics. I bet Dad wants me to store my stick there." Well, Dad did not want the stick there, but I did find a three inch stick inside the card area. The stick almost fit as I barely saw it from the side. Guess he was bored.

Example two and three came from the same blonde-headed rascal. As is typical down here, our house has an alarm system that is regularly monitored. Upon arrival, we received a briefing on its operation and were provided a keychain with a "panic" button should we ever need it while at home. One day we got a call saying our panic button was going off. It had happened the night before as well so we were ready to submit a work order to fix the alarm when Candace realized she didn't know where her keys were. "Claire, do you know where my keys are?" "Yes." Mystery solved. The alarm functioned as advertised. Thanks for the confirmation, Claire. We love you. Claire's second offense can only be attributed to boredom. As Candace must have ancestral roots from some part of the world where it never rained, she drinks tons of water and always has a water bottle within arm's reach. Well, Claire came across a full water bottle on mommy's nightstand and must have wondered what would happen if she played a trick on mommy and hid the water, but not the bottle. Confused? Well, dumping the water bottle into mommy's nightstand drawer (and all over the top... phone, magazine, etc) was not a funny trick mommy appreciated. One towel later and lots of tears, the phone mostly works.

We feel bad for the boredom and that will be alleviated this week as Claire starts her Argentine pre-school tomorrow, and Lily starts kindergarten on Wednesday. We made an excursion to the school uniform store that has a really clever indigenous name: School Uniform Store. (I'm not making that up: http://www.schooluniformstore.com.ar). We got what we needed. We have been walking around the neighborhood as we await the shipment of our car. I, however, have had the unique opportunity of driving an embassy car home and it was an experience. Having never really had video games growing up (missile command and asteroids don't really count), I never had the chance to hone my aggressive driving skills to the level they need to be here. A friend up the street had an Atari and we played Pole Position AMAP (as much as possible), but it didn't provide the training I needed. If the streets of DC and the streets of Chicago were organized chaos, take away designated lanes, stop signs, traffic cops, common sense, right of way, and courtesy, and you have arrived to the roads of Buenos Aires. I hope our van gets here soon so I can triple the insurance on it.

On another positive note, I was able to successfully jailbreak and unlock my iPhone, install a SIM card from a local phone service and it works like a charm. Even when apple products are spoiled, they perform beautifully. The jailbreak and unlocking even happened to be completed (due to my own technical incompetence) AFTER the legal ruling saying it was no longer illegal to do it. Besides, we're in Argentina... it's like throwing a rock at a bald eagle in Canada... NOT against the rules in another country!! Like anyone would ever, um, do that.

Candace has been very pleased at what is available to us. Amazon has a great food section, and we have discovered netgrocer.com that will ship us peanut butter, syrup, and brown sugar. Staples of any diet. She made a visit to the local Walmart (there are a few scattered in the capital), renewed our membership with Netflix, and I even took a stroll through 'MacStation', the Apple store equivalent at the local mall. While not an Apple store, it's an authorized re-seller and when you walk it, it's as futuristic and clean as any Apple store I've been it, if not a little odd with reduced inventory and prices that look even more outrageous when shown in pesos.

On a sad note, we're unlucky in one sense. I had told Candace that upon arrival we'd drive right by the BA temple as it sits right along the freeway on the drive from the airport to the city. I told the kids to keep an eye out for it. When we got to the site, we saw cranes and construction equipment and an empty shell of a temple. As it turns out, the temple was closed in Nov '09 for extensive renovations and expansion. Originally scheduled to close for 18 months (to open in May '11), we've heard it's way behind schedule as they have added new projects and we're not sure when it will open again. The announced Cordoba temple hasn't broken ground yet and the next closest temple is in Montevideo, Uruguay. However, it's not as easy for me to take off after dinner so we can take turns going. We'll have to work through that one a little bit.

Other than that, we know we made the right choice in coming. While it's been hard (mostly on Candace), things are going to start looking up as the girls will be busy with school and our things have got to start arriving. We've made arrangements with some friends to share a maid, we've got Direct TV Puerto Rico shipping us a DVR box, and our American next door neighbors just returned from vacation. Next project is to clean up the parrilla in the back yard.