I had to share this excellent video about Uruguay. Thanks to Brad and Lisa at UR MOVING WHERE?!?! for finding it!
I really love how it brings in so many aspects of life here in Uruguay. I guess it's just a video to bring in more residents, but even so, it's well done and quite interesting.

Enjoy!

A long, long time ago...1991 to be exact, I had the opportunity to go visit my sister while she was living in Brussels. I worked really hard babysitting all summer long for my other sister and by the end of summer I made enough to buy my own ticket. I was 15 years-old, a Freshman in high school, and I had the opportunity to make such a great trip. I got permission to leave school for a month. I left in the beginning of October and arrived back home on the 30th, the day before a bad blizzard that would have kept me in Chicago had I flown a day later.

Some days ago this article was brought to my attention: Five Things You Need To Know About Uruguay . While the writer assures the reader that he "loves" Uruguay, he's still pretty snarky in his comments about this great country. I took the time to write down some facts whereas he took the time to make some assumptions.

One afternoon Lucas suggested we visit Lapataia. It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon, so we squished up in the 2 seater Saveiro and took off. It's such a wonderful place, I wish we would have gone earlier in the day and spent more time. Oh well, at least it's close to our house!

This is the magnificent entrance. In the summer the place is buzzing, but we went in autumn, so it was quiet and fairly uncrowded.

Wow! It's surreal to go back in time with these posts. I remember our trip to visit Wally and Denise in Marindia like it was yesterday. Wally and Denise moved to Uruguay in June of 2008. They bought a house in Marindia which they then remodeled. You can read everything about their adventures in Uruguay on their great blog.

Waking up the next morning to greet our first day in Uruguay was quite an experience. The weather was perfect for exploring around our new home. We decided to take a walk and see what we could find.

In Punta del Este (perhaps in all of Uruguay, I'm not sure) houses have names. Our house is Te de Nube which means Cloud Tea. We love that tradition here. We can't wait to have our own house to name. The house name is really part of the address, too, so it's not just for looks. ;)

After all the packing and all the stress, we finally made it to Des Moines for our next to last night in the US. It took two trips with the largest U-Haul trucks. With lots of help and lots of heavy lifting, we got all our things we wanted to save stuffed into 2 storage rental units in Des Moines. Hopefully sometime it can be condensed to one unit. That will be slightly larger than the 40' shipping container that will be used to ship our things to Uruguay, but at least in the meantime it will cost less to rent one unit than two.

Sadly, you can only leave if you first say good-bye. We planned a big going away party at our favorite Mexican restaurant, El Mezcal, in Norfolk, Nebraska. We know the owner, Rene, and he told us the best time for the party would be on a Sunday around 5pm, so we set the date for April 25th, a couple weeks before we were to fly to Uruguay.

It was a wonderful evening and we are so grateful for everyone that showed up to wish us well. I didn't get pictures of everyone, but here are a few shots of dear family and friends.

I know I haven't blogged in ages. There's been a reason. We've kept something under our caps for awhile now, but here's the "official" announcement.

In a previous post I mentioned this little spot as being the prettiest piece of paradise I had ever seen.