Our First Full Day

We woke up on Wednesday in a strange new country to be greeted by a lot of strange sounds. The loudest one seemed to be right out our window. Turns out, a family of macaws are nesting in a dead palm outside of our window. Called guacamaya banderas here, these guys are brilliant blue with yellow chests and red accents (they are a national bird because their coloring is the same as the flag). The male is at least 2 feet tall, not counting his tail, he may even be taller. There is a female and 2 babies. Once I get good pictures I will post them. It's hard to catch them because they fly in and then you can't see them in the palm so I have to be quick and catch them as they fly out in the morning or fly in at dusk.

We do have another bird in our window box but it's not as exciting as the macaws. It's this stupid little rat with wings:

And Jamison sure likes him

At first I thought this pigeon had landed in our window box to die or something because it wasn't afraid of us at all. It stayed all day and got comfortable at night. I thought I would come in the next morning only to find it dead or something but nope, just hanging out.

We spent the rest of Wednesday looking for a grocery store to get some food. I think I'm going to like trying all of the products...especially the chocolate. Oh my goodness is there a lot of chocolate. It's good stuff too. I'm still a sucker for Dove or Lindt Truffles and I haven't found anything here I like more than those, yet.

Thursday, we called around to some of the embassy families to find someone who had kids the boys could play with. We were invited to swim and were blown away by the apartment this family lived in. I hoped our permanent apartment would be even half as nice as this place! The boys got a kick out of the view from the parking lot. Once the rainy season gets here in a few weeks, the skies will clear of the smog and you will be able to see how green the hills and mountains are.

So that brings us to Friday and that means I am caught up! Today we went to the embassy to meet with the housing rep who took us to see our permanent apartment. I can't wait to get some good pictures, the place is amazing but still has a lot of stuff in it from the previous embassy family. They were using furniture provided by the embassy and it hasn't been completely cleared out yet so we will wait for them to clean it up first before I get pictures. The place is huge, there are mango trees outside of our windows. There are only 10 families living in the building and we are the only building at the top of the hill. We are on the 2nd floor so we don't have one of the best views but it is still an amazing view. The boys were shocked at the size of their rooms and that they each had their very own walk-in closet and bathroom. We got to explain the whole bidet process to them (that was funny to watch the expressions and gears churning as they processed that information) and told them no turning the bidets on full blast, the ceiling does not need to be washed.

We went back to the embassy, had our security briefings, got our badges and ate lunch at the cafeteria where Jamison threw up on Kris who had to rush home and change before he had to meet with the Ambassador in less than an hour. We took Jamison home, cleaned everyone up, Kris went back to work and his meeting with the Ambassador took place without the Ambassador ever realizing what just happened to poor Kris who was a little bit flustered to say the least.

Glad it's the weekend! We'll get to see a little more of Caracas tomorrow (or I guess later on today since it's past midnight right now) Better get to bed!