Monthly Archives: May 2009

Furnished or Unfurnished?

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We brought a bunch of stuff with us but didn’t want to have to worry about all the details of setting up a house in Uruguay, so we opted for a furnished rental.  I am so happy that we did.  

kitchen- A night viewFurnished apartments/houses generally come with everything from furniture to artwork, dishes to brooms.  Ours was no different.   There were things here that I never would have expected in the house we rented: curtains on every window, a vacuum, new kitchen towels, place mats and tablecloths, a bucket, gardening tools just to name a few. I figured that furnished meant just furnished. I did not  think that furnished meant EVERYTHING!  Most of the items in our place are new as well, so I can’t complain. Our landlord keeps asking us if we need anything else.  We purchased a clothes line to string in the back courtyard and then learned that he would have taken care of it. 

On the flip side, UNfurnished means that it includes nothing.  Usually that also means no appliances.  Yep. The previous renters/owners take the appliances when they move out.  All of them.  Range, refrigerator, washer: all gone. Many houses that we’ve seen do not have clothes dryers or dishwasher, so I guess that is a few less appliances that you have to worry about replacing.  

We looked at unfurnished places but the thought of renting (there are a few furniture/appliance rental resources here) or acquiring all of the necessary items to furnish and equip a house was so daunting, we very quickly decided on furnished and I am so happy that we did (yes, I had to say it again).  

As advised by people already living in Uruguay, we brought bedding with us from the USA along with a few towels (have to get a few more) and favorite pieces of cookware/kitchenware.  We’ve been in the house for two weeks and feel that we are nearly completely set up and can focus on other things (like working, setting up daycare, getting health insurance, having long lunches out with new friends.  You know, important stuff!!)

Daycare Options

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After much consideration and weighing the pros and cons, we have decided that we want Geneva in professional care outside the home instead of having a nanny.  The advantages of a licensed caregiver, socialization, language skills and a stimulating environment won for us. 

We checked out two Daycare/Early Learning centers today and were quite impressed.  ”Snoopy” (I doubt the name and likeness is licensed) came highly recommended by several people and “Humanitos” (Little Humans) was nearby and we wanted to check it out.  Both have highly trained personnel, great facilities indoor and outdoor play areas, and excellent pricing compared to what we are accustomed.  

The rate for 4 hours per day, 5 days a week (80 hours per month) was between $110-150 per month.  There are a few additional costs for materials and special activities, but considering we were paying over $800 per month for two full days per week (64 hours per month) of  in-home care in MN, this is an incredible savings. 

The two schools have a very similar format in that there are two sessions per day. Morning is from 8:30-12:30 and afternoon is 1:30-5:30.  You could opt to attend both sessions, but the above pricing is for one session only.  

Snoopy has been around for 30 years, and has this location and another one named Goody across town. It is a very popular program and as a result, very busy. The building is a renovated home (as is Humanitos) and was absolutely bustling with activity. I was amazed with how many instructors there were floating around.  They also had an indoor “gym” (possibly a renovated sunroom?) which was nice and bright in the back of the building in case it was wet outside, like today. 

Humanitos has been in existence for 15 years and was MUCH more calm, but with smaller facilities and fewer kids in each age group.  Very professionally run, the staff was extremely warm and friendly for our drop-in visit. I loved their indoor play area as well,  it was just within the interior of the building.  Both buildings looked very safe with the proper child-proofing measures in place. 

The integration process is incredible at both locations.  It can take up to a week where you bring the child in for an hour (with parent present) and stay so that they can get accustomed to the new environment, knowing that you are there.  The next day, you stay for a little longer.  It will probably help the parents as well as the kids, although I think Geneva will start playing and think “Bye Mom, this place is GREAT!” 

One thing that I was not wild about at first glance was the teacher-to-child ratio for the schools.  At Geneva’s age group (she is almost 17 months), it is 1/6 at Humanitos and a possible 1/7 at Snoopy (but 1/6 with current enrollment). For toddlers, this seems like an awful lot of kids to one teacher, in my opinion.  I looked up the MN childcare standards though, and much to my surprise, 1/7 is the limit for toddler care in daycare facilities back home.  

I do have to mention the cutest thing in the world:  The kids at both locations wear these sweet little “túnica” (smocks).  They are just so sweet when you have a room full of little kids together wearing all of the same smocks.  Can I get an “Aaawwwwwwwwww!”? 

I have a referral from an Expat to one other center which I am definitely going to check out as well.  I don’t know the exact location or format of the third center but I will add an update when I receive more info.

Expat Travel Technology: How do I get my mail?

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As we know there are many challenges to moving abroad. One of those is what to do with your postal mail. Should you have it forwarded to your new home in your far flung land? Maybe your 90-year-old mother will take care of it for you. Maybe that shifty-eyed cousin? For the most part, thanks to technology, you can eliminate most of your postal mail completely. Half of it is stuff you didn’t want when you were living in your home country anyway. Now that you’ve moved you really have no need for that junk mail. First tip: Sign up for online statements and online billing whenever you can. If you can navigate email and the Internet, there really is no need to receive the majority of your current mail.

So now you’ve eliminated the bulk of your mail. What to do with the rest? In our case we receive the remainder of our postal mail through an online scan and mail forwarding service. We started this about 6 months before we left with a company called Earth Class Mail (ECM). ECM receives your mail at a PO Box, then does an initial high resolution color scan of the front and back of the piece of mail. This scan is then emailed for you to take action. Scan what’s inside, Recycle, Shred or forward via FedEx to another location. The service is great for sorting mail. You have copies of all your mail in PDF form that you can save to your computer or it can be archived on ECM’s site.

We’re self employed as many expatriates are. We still received paper checks from clients and vendors, which is another issue. I wish everyone just did ACH/direct deposit, but they don’t. One of the many tools that ECM offers is “Deposit Check”. After scanning your mail you may deposit a check with a click of a button into a Wells Fargo account. I had to establish a new account with Wells Fargo to make this happen but it beat having to worry about sending checks to family for them to deposit on my behalf. For a small per check fee I can deposit online in just one step.

To be honest the set up process with Wells Fargo was long and painful. It took nearly two months for the account creation and testing. I believe this was due to it being a relatively new service at the time of my set up, but be prepared. Wells did cover the cost of my checks (which I may not use since I live in Uruguay, but still) and waived account fees for the first couple months.

I love ECM. I love receiving mail online. If I return to the States I will continue this service. It just simplifies things too much for me to give it up. They also license the technology throughout Europe with Swiss Post (addresses available throughout Europe). It’s great if you’re a road warrior traveling for business 4 of every 5 days of the business week or just don’t want to deal with all the junk. With Earth Class Mail, junk mail is almost all gone and if I do get it,  I hit the recycle button. I’m kind of a hippie too and this is a fairly green way to deal with your mail. You’ll have a much higher percentage of your mail recycled and a much lower percentage of garbage mail making it to your virtual door.

With ECM, you still have a physical mailing address to select.  There are many PO Box locations to choose from as well as several street locations.  If you want to be virtually in Manhattan…bam!  You’re there.  (Or at least your mail is there). If you’re only receiving personal mail, a PO Box will location will probably work for you. Since we receive business mail, it complicates matters when vendors will accept nothing but a street address. We pay a small additional fee to have a street address in Seattle (instead of a PO Box). This still wasn’t ideal for us, though, and we decided to have an additional address set up with a UPS store in Minneapolis. Twice per month our UPS Store automatically forwards all of our personal and business mail that is not already directed to our ECM location in Seattle. ECM receives it and upon our instruction they open the Priority Package from UPS and “induct” all of the individual pieces of mail as though they had been sent directly. Many probably won’t require this extra step but ECM just didn’t have an address in Minny so we felt if was necessary for us to maintain our presence there. They have addresses in most major cities and  are adding more all the time.

There are several other ways to get your mail. You can DHL or FedEx regularly to your new foreign locale. Or in the case of Uruguay, you can try a service like Miami-Box. Have your Amazon and other packages shipped right to the street address of Miami-Box and they in turn will bring to down to Uruguay and deliver right to your door very quickly. There are high fees and duty to worry about, as well as certain items that can’t be shipped but it’s a service that’s worth taking a look at.  We also employ the minions that read our blog to courier items down to us.  Not a bad practice!  If you have family or friends coming down, have them take a trip to Target or Costco to grab some of your favorite items.  But I digress… 

Earth Class Mail : Receive PDF files of all your mail online. Sort, save, recycle. Very simple, very easy.

Posts to Come

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We have a few projects in the works and wanted to let everyone know what will be coming in the next week, in no particular order: 

        X  Expat Travel Technology Series, Part 2: “How do I get my mail?”  Brad’s weekly update on our tech tools.

        X  Setting up Daycare:  Two places that we’ve looked at, including our thoughts and prices for 5 half days per week in the post “Daycare Options”

        X  ”Furnished or Unfurnished?” and why we chose what we did for our new home.

        X  Creepy Crawlies: Post took the form of “It’s The Little Differences”  to discuss lots of small things that are different in UY from those which we are accustomed.

  1. Firing up the Parilla: Our first attempt at an pseudo-Uruguayan Asado (pseudo because it was vegetariano)
  2. Photo/Video gallery via SmugMug

If there is anything you absolutely cannot wait to see, please send us a note.  We can pull some strings.

We will be updating this list to link to the topics after they are posted. 

Locks, Keys and Security

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19 KeysI mentioned before that we received an insane number of keys upon move in. Well, we still don’t know where they all belong, but there is truly a key for everything (19 total).  Our back windows have keyed locks (2) each with its own key.  The back door as well, another key.  The storage/servicio room outside, another key.  Closet doors and bedroom doors lock, all with different keys.  We have three keys needed just to get in the front gate and front door.  

There are a few areas that do not have keys  though.  The windows in front that face the street front windows have wooden shutters that lock from the inside via a lever, so surprisingly, no key needed there (but there are also metal bars that are between the shutters and windows which is very common in Montevideo) .  The mailbox which is located at our front gate also doesn’t have a key, at least not from the house side.  

Here we also have three locks on the front door, a security system with motion detectors inside and out, and cameras in the front and back courtyards viewable from a special monitor.  Pretty elaborate system and in terms of security, better to over-do it and be a bit excessive than the alternative!  

And all this in a great part of town.  Don’t read the above information wrong, this is a wonderful neighborhood with low crime.  In all of Uruguay, violent crime is extremely rare and the overall crime rate is low but petty theft is viewed as common.  If you leave something out, it may just find a new home.  We don’t want that so we’re using all of our security features available to us!  

When we lived in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis (not known as the best part of town) for 7 years, we had only one key that opened the front, back and garage-to-house door.  The windows “locked” with a standard window latch, not a key. We also had a security system with glass break sensors but we never left windows open and never considered bars on the windows because of fire escape reasons.  Different construction here. Different standards, as I have noted previously, make bars on the windows nearly a non-issue.  

Half-closed shutters

As we’ve seen throughout our travels, the differences between the USA and the rest of the world are interesting.  There is so much to learn in a culture.  We are just taking a fingernail to the surface right now.  Not everything can be judged from our USA eyes, nor should it be.  The best lesson we’ve learned: It is what it is.

May 1- Worker’s Day

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May 1 is Worker’s Day in Uruguay.  Similar, I believe, to Labor Day in the US except nearly all workers get the day off. All government offices and banks are closed with nearly all shops and restaurants closed as well. Thankfully we were warned of this ahead of time and I was able to get to the Supermercado and bakery yesterday. That in itself should be a post.  People were absolutely everywhere. It was as if the stores wouldn’t be open for a week.  

Empty Street- May 1Today was a completely different scene (above). I was out walking throughout the day today and it was like a different world.  Few cars on the streets, barely anyone walking.  I have no idea where everyone went, but it’s a great long weekend for most every Uruguayo to enjoy. 

This afternoon as I took Geneva to the park (no injuries, I am happy to report), I noticed that a few restaurants had opened and they were packed.   We cooked at home today, then got the baby to bed, and we had time to enjoy a “Pilsen Stout” (Dark Uruguan beer) and some US television.  Hopefully we’ll have episodes of 30 Rock and How I Met Your Mother…. if we can get the stream to buffer.  Nonetheless,  a nice, quiet holiday Friday in Montevideo, Uruguay.