January Photo Update

We've almost made it a whole month living in Argentina. January has been full of learning, trying, trying again, and really loving where we are. The kids start school this Wednesday and we are excited to really dig into this new life. 

This is Rio de la Plata. We can walk to it in less than five minutes from our house. We have some really incredible views from the house out to the river that I hope we never get used to. There are almost always sailboats out there, and frequently a cargo ship. The river is pretty brown, despite being named "the river of silver" and it has a smell that will keep my kids out of it, but it's a pretty place to walk to and has nice trails and parks along this stretch. 

This was a different day we went down to the river. The forecast was partly cloudy, but we definitely found ourselves in a deluge. 

Another photo of a walk through our neighborhood. There will randomly be cobblestone streets  (behind Charlotte), always really cool trees and frequently interesting houses. It's very charming! 

Here is an example of the amazing trees. I'm told there's an app that indexes every single tree in Buenos Aires. It makes sense, every one is a marvel!

One Saturday we headed downtown and stumbled across some Japanese gardens. We're suckers for gardens and couldn't pass it by!

Then we went to the Casa Rosada where we had taken Charlotte 11 years earlier. She took some of her first steps right here. 

Baby Charlotte:

Practically an adult Charlotte:

Another day we visited the Retiro Cemetery where Eva Peron is buried. It's not easy to find her grave (tomb?) but we eventually tracked it down. She's buried with her Duarte family, which may be why she's so hard to find.

Facturas for breakfast. Almost all of these had dulce de leche incorporated....can't live with out it!

We attend church in the same chapel James' dad did when he lived here as a kid. There are people in our ward that remember James' Grandfather from when he was mission president here many years ago. Hermano Walker (below) is one such person, and just as good a human as you will meet. His son is Alan Walker, a general authority in our church.  

Had to visit the doctor to have authentic Argentina well-child checks for school and summer camp which they did this past week. The health system here is different, but not bad. The doctors are great and well educated, they just have very little funding for updated equipment/facilities. 

The doctor was magic and got them to express some affection for each other :)

A few words about the house we're living in: it's amazing. and huge. and we're renting it for a screaming deal. We were looking for something large because we expect all of you to come visit. It was advertised as 10 years old, but it's actually 20 and has been sitting empty for about five years. It reminds me of houses from movies like Casper, the Ghost and Mr. Chicken, or Jumanji. There are some really super cool things about it, and then there are some hilariously crazy things about it. There was another house James really wanted that I kiboshed because I could foresee lots of problems with it, so we went with this house. However, there are things you just can't predict. Turns out the master bath leaks when it rains hard, the master shower has zero water pressure so we end up showering in the kid's bathroom, we have run out of water twice, and last night this happened while Charlotte was washing the dishes. 

Because the house is so awesome it has two sinks and we were able to finish up. We still don't have an actual dishwasher yet. We're supposed to buy that but it's just another thing on our list...Hopefully I'm not deterring anyone from visiting! All these things are fixable and we're slowly getting the house into better shape. It just needs a little TLC💜

Encouragement to come visit:

Adorable and loud green parrots in our backyard. Find the one upside down. 

Last but not least, Charlotte was able to go to the temple to do baptisms for the first time with our ward. She had already printed out family names because we were hoping to go with family right before we left Seattle, but that didn't work out. This turned out to be pretty special too. 

Actually no. This is the last thing. Minivans are hard to find here, so we tried for as similar as possible and found a Hyundai H1. It's big, but so far we're happy with it! This is about as hip as I've ever felt :) After living without a car for a week, I'm grateful for it!!