Skinny clouds

The sun is shining through on us today-literally and figuratively.  There's a lot going on.

The kids have been happily accepted into the International School, so they'll start on Monday.  They need extra Spanish to catch up-but so do we all!  I'm still self-describing as functioning; but I'm also looking forward to learning more.  Me have more me want say spanish-y...  OK, it's probably not like that exactly...but I prefer to be able to express my thoughts with a little more ease!

Jeff's having a great site visit today-we haven't yet met a Colombian who was anything less than polite. Almost every one has been beyond helpful, kind, courteous--even the other drivers.  There is a thing here, where cars with certain number on their plates have to skip rush hours on assigned days "pica y plata" and that's been the only semi-agressive thing I've seen: someone with a "don't drive past 5:30" number was a bit desperate to get their car home and parked and tried to make a lane for themselves, but...they were from Bogota (so maybe that's a more typical "big-city" move?).

I found a health food store, so we now have paraben-free sunscreen for the kids (see sun shining on us above), and bug repellent.  Our smallest fry has been covered in bites, which she inventories aloud, they swell like a spider bite on her, filled with liquid, and give her the itchy-crazies.  The boys have had bites too, but they're less bonkers about it, because they don't swell like hers.  They just itch as one would expect...no bloating with fluid and blistering out like boils!

I'm just back to this now, after five minutes of trying to spell out my email for a lady over the phone.  Over the phone is difficult, especially if the person speaks Spanish and English, because it's tricky to know if they're trying to spell in English, as in /eh/ in Spanish means "e" but means "a" in English...I ended up telling here that there's a lady at the company who's helping us with our internet, and giving her the number so they could talk to each other.  That's little stuff... and there's lots of little stuff.

Getting back to the bigger stuff:  our sofa is supposed to arrive at the house today.  I hope it does.  Commerce is really easy here compared to both Santiago and Cajamarca-and delivery is even easier than in Canada.  $15 bucks get it to the house, and set up by the vendor's people:)  Reminds me, I need to buy felts for the sofa feet.  Now, that's back to little things...which stores sell that?  And sticky tack, and 3M command strips for hanging pictures, and... AND-have you ever tried opening anything without scissors?  Ironically, I have two knives-that I can't cut into, or cut free, because they're both encased in that unyielding superplastic that will happily slice hands, and still not give!

I'm about 1/3 of the way through my paper that's due Saturday (it's Thursday), so if I can progress with that this afternoon, here at the hotel, while the WiFi signal is strong...I'm going to be contented with that, especially now, knowing that I have the weekend to prep the kids for school.  We have lunchbags,  bottles of water will do for now, and there are little tetras of chocolate milk in the fridge.

This is the second move I've had (of ALL of them), that has had a house ready to move into-and I mean ready to the level that I don't feel compelled to pressure wash it with bleach.  It is so clean.  The furniture is there, ready to use...it's pretty great.  Once the internet is functioning at the house (and that's getting partially, possibly even completely sorted this afternoon) we'll be able to move in.  I need it for my course, it's not just about Facebook.

OH-and to end on a thrilling note: the shipment has shipped and is scheduled (I type "scheduled" because I've done this a couple times now!) to arrive on the 18th.  What would happen if all that happened as it was intended to?  I'd have all my stuff-that's what'd happen!

Cheers,
Lynnel