9 June 2013 - Off to Argentina

On Monday, our former neighbors, Eric and Cristal, invited us back to their house for one last visit around the patio fire.  The deck you can see behind the girls is our old house, and all of us can admit it wasn't easy to go back and say goodbye again.  Once the s'mores were broken out though, there was much joy and rejoicing.

After school on Tuesday, we caught up with our old neighbor Faith one last time.  Faith moved away a couple of years ago, but we wanted to get together and say goodbye, so we all went out for Italian Ice.

On Wednesday, the day we were trying to get ready to leave our temporary home and head for Jerry and Danae's house in New Jersey, Emily and Madeline had an awards ceremony at the elementary school.  Joanne and I spent most of the morning there.  Both girls received several awards.  Here's Madeline with her Accelerated Reader award.

This is Emily receiving perfect attendance, which we still can't quite figure out, but she'll take it.

Madeline got one for being in the orchestra.

After school, we finished cleaning up our temporary abode, packed all of our things into our little car, our cartop cargo box, and unfortunately, into our friends' basement, and finally, finally hit the road for New Jersey.  We arrived at Jerry and Danae's just before 2 AM.  Thursday morning was spent playing with cousins and separating winter (Argentina) clothes from summer (NY/NJ/PA/VA) clothes.  The US clothes stayed in Jerry and Danae's basement, while the winter clothes went with us to Newark Airport.  We flew to Atlanta, then all night to Buenos Aires.  After clearing Customs, we took a bus for seven hours north to our new home city of Santa Fe.  The girls were tired (we all were), but no worse for the wear when we finally arrived on Friday evening at our apartment.

Here is Jessica moving into her room.

After all those hours of travel, Emily wanted to show me that she'd joined the Blackfeet tribe.  We were all pleased to get showers.

On Saturday we took a walkabout the city.  First, we found the church, which is just seven blocks from our apartment.

Next, we found the street market, where Madeline couldn't wait to start haggling for artisan jewelry.

We found Jessica's store...

and Madeline's store.

So far, no Emily store, but we'll find it.  The city of Santa Fe is full of wonderful parks with incredibly dangerous plargrounds -- the kind you and I used to know before about a billion American lawsuits stripped almost everything out of the parks back home.

Madeline was so excited to climb this dragon.

Here are the girls in front of one of the various fountains throughout the city.

Next week's update will include some photos of the apartment, along with my office at the university and other excursions around Santa Fe.