Dear Family and Friends,
Hello from Obera, Misiones, Argentina. We hope that this letter finds you all well. We are well and still trying to get set up in town while we make arrangements to have a house built on our farm in Campo Ramon.
This week we rented a house in Obera for three months in hopes that Dane can build a house quickly on the chacara. Right now it is a debate whether to build using wood or brick, so we have not made any formal arrangements to begin building as of yet.
The house that we have rented has two bedrooms and an external bathroom attached to the house that can be accessed by going out the back door. Dane bought a little device sort of like a bucket with a hose that you can fill with water and then plug into the outlet so that we can have some running water in the house for washing dishes or whatever else we might need hot water for. He also bought an electric shower head for hot water in the shower. After the first night in the house, we discovered that after dark, the house had a lot of cucharaches (cockroaches), so Dane sprayed the next day and the problem seems to be solved for now, something we are very thankful for. Yesterday we purchased some furniture: a table and chairs, a double bed and a bunk bed so now we are starting to feel more at home. We got a post office box and the address is: Jason Dane Donaldson, CC No. 16, CP 3360, Obera – Misiones, Argentina because if you happen to be away from the house when the correo try to deliver the mail, it just gets sent back to the sender, there are no second delivery attempts. Dane has to have a locksmith make a key for the box because they don’t give you one when you rent the box (strange isn’t it?).
All of our neighbors have been very friendly and are very willing to lend whatever help they can to us even though communication is very difficult because of our ignorance of the language. For instance, our neighbor next door gives us ice and the lady behind him, water (update: We do have our own water connection to the house now). The escribania, Natalia, (like a notary public) has been very helpful to us. She brought us a baby bed today and has accompanied me to two obstetrician appointments in order to translate for us. Her husband, Javier, has many connections in town and has helped Dane to get a work order for internet and telephone service even though that is usually very hard for a foreigner to do in a timely manner.
In many neighborhoods around here, the locals set up stores from their houses called kioskos. From these stores, they sell all sorts of things like: meat, yogurt, milk, eggs, bread, drinks, toilet paper, cookies, fresh fruits and vegetables, cigarettes, wine, light bulbs, diapers, etc. On our block alone, I counted six of them. This has been very helpful since it is some distance to walk to the supermercado (supermarket) and we don’t have a cocina (lit. kitchen but they mean stove) yet, it is necessary to buy food every day until we can get ourselves more set up. The prices for goods at these kioskos we have also found to be slightly cheaper than the prices at the supermarket.
We have found it entertaining that as we learn more and more Castillano, our English seems to be suffering. When we speak English to each other we tend to speak with a Castillano accent and use terrible grammar (something we have probably picked up from the few locals that do speak a little Ingles (English). The little children, Elisabeth and David, make up there own Spanish sounding words and speak to each other a mile a minute which is very funny to watch. We also make lots of mistakes when trying to communicate. For instance, Dane told the neighbor yesterday when he was fixing our water connection and theirs, "Yo quiero comer tu," which is, "I want to eat you." He was trying to tell her that he wanted to pay her for letting us hook up to her water until our meter was connected, but his words got jumbled. He corrected himself by saying, "Yo quiero comprar tu," which is, "I want to buy you," not much better than the first statement, but she understood what he was trying to say and we have laughed and laughed about it ever since. I have the same problem constantly. Today I asked for ten and half pesos worth of meat (about 6 pounds) when I just wanted two and a half (about 1.5 pounds) at the kiosko around the corner – the man looked at me like I was crazy and I couldn’t figure out what the problem was until he asked me if I wanted the whole loaf of bologna. Then when I got home I made a phone call on our new phone: 011-54-03755-406640 (expensive call unless you have a great international plan – hopefully our internet will be hooked up soon and you can call us for free and us you on our VOIP phone (806-748-0695) and told the woman on the other end of the line that I was from Jessica, not that I was Jessica. Needless to say, the call was a total failure. I don’t think she understood a word of what I said and I certainly did not understand her.
We heard from Grandmommy that the superbowl was last weekend in the U.S., something Gabriella, our Castillano teacher, had never even heard of, and when Elijah got his American football out and played with the son of the real estate agent, Raul, that Dane purchased our farm from in the front yard, all the children from the neighborhood sat in the street outside our house to watch. They stayed long after the game ended and until we went to bed. I think that we are a most curious sight to our neighbors; however, as I said before, they are all very kind and helpful. Still, we are very anxious to get out on the farm and begin working with our own animals and the land in a much more peaceful environment. Raul did take us out to the chacara (farm) yesterday so that the children and I could see it before the baby comes. It was a tremendous effort as the farm is grown up in underarm high weeds in many places and is very hilly. It is very beautiful though. The children and Dane played in the waterfall at the spring and drank the fresh water that came out of it. Everyone reported that it was the best water they had ever tasted. The tea trees smelled wonderful and are pretty too.
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