Fishbowl

Right now there's a dude doing some sort of crazy Tai Bo outside in the park. I can see him.

I can see lots of things.

Because we moved into our new apartment.

And my camera doesn't have a wide enough lens to encapsulate how enormous the windows are. Among the other things I can see through my enormous fish bubble are:

• The Ocean
• The Naval Museum across the street
• A skate park
• The stupid ugly building where I used to live, way, waayyyy off in the distance
• The yacht club
• A swimming pool (I don't know how to get access to it yet)
• The bus depot
• This amazing hamburger stand: Hamburgueseria el Condor.

Hamburgueseria el Condor makes nothing but hamburgers, hotdogs and chorizo sandwiches. They don't even serve fries. And their hamburgers, as if trying to solve the age-old question, "why is it called a hamburger?" are made with a beef patty, a slice of cheese, and a big ol' slice of ham. Of course. (Because everything here has ham on it.)

In addition, you can put mushrooms, olives, chimichurri, spicy peppers, garlic sauce or just about anything else on it. You can! You really can!

I digress.  What's important is that we finally moved.  We really only spent a little over a month in the other place, but living somewhere you don't like can change your whole outlook on life.  This new apartment, however, is mega overkill. One might say it is extreme.

In addition to our amazing, excessive, insane view of the Montevideo skyline, and our white furniture and our flatscreen TV (recall that the last TV was shaped like a dishwasher and bolted to our bedroom ceiling), this place also has three bedrooms and four bathrooms. Once again I ask, what is one supposed to do with four bathrooms (and four bidets)?

Saturday, our first day in the new place, we did five loads of laundry. The lavendaria we'd had to take our clothes to before--where you drop off your clothes and then they return them to you washed and folded--had taken to losing our socks. I have a very limited supply of socks here. We boycotted them and hadn't done laundry in weeks. (The glamorous life of a diplomat!) So while the washer here only hold about 8 shirts, it is still a gift straight from the gods. THE GODS I TELL YOU.

Kitchen! Real kitchen! With. a. dishwasher.

Some things still take a little getting used to. All the controls on the appliances are foreign and take a little trial and error. For instance I think the dryer might be asking me how many hundreds of times I want it to spin my clothes around. But I don't know.

And the refrigerator has a space-age control panel we haven't figured out yet. It beeps angrily if you keep the door open very long. And there's a button with a palm tree and a button that says "I Care." Please let me know if you have any idea what they mean. I do care. A little.

Also, it is very easy to get lost. I'm convinced that one of us is going to try to walk into the back bedroom and end up in the labyrinth from House of Leaves. Or at least discover a fifth bathroom or another kitchen. And how awesome would THAT be?

Parilla (grill) on the back patio, washer and dryer to the right.

Anyway, I supposed it seems a little weird that I'm happier now having the flu and being in a nice apartment than I was being perfectly healthy and living in a crappy one. I'm a nester. I nest. I need my living space to be bright and sunny and not smell like sewage

I'm probably going to miss the sound of our neighbor vomitting in the middle of night.

Or probably not.

Our bedroom... has California closets.