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During our time in Baires, we want to learn how to play polo! Okay, I’m just kidding. Actually, Tom and I have a much simpler equine goal: learn how to trot.

Yes, that’s right. We are incapable of trotting in a Western saddle without bouncing all over the place. (I have learned the trick of riding on a Tennessee Walker–you feel like you’re trotting, but it’s much smoother!) So one of our goals is to leave Argentina with some very basic equestrian skills under our belts, like knowing how to trot properly.

(“La Vida Argentina” posts will be a multi-part series of posts discussing what we hope to do and see while in Argentina.)

Not to promote Nike(!), but here is another ad that completely embraces why we want to make sure the girls stay involved in sports.

We want the girls to continue to be active in sports while we are in South America, but we are a little concerned about the prevalence of field hockey, in which the girls have no interest, especially since it is not really played in the Pacific Northwest.

Zoe wants to continue to play soccer, but is nervous that no girls play and that all of the kids will be really good since everyone is soccer obsessed. We don’t know if they will have baseball/softball available for her.

For Zelda, we are considering martial arts since she has already informed us that she doesn’t want to play soccer in an intense environment.

I love to quote parts of this Nike ad to the girls (popular during women’s Olympic hockey fever) because it completely represents how we want our girls to live–fierce and free.

“When I invented me the world went, “What?” WOMEN DON’T PLAY HOCKEY! A place for me didn’t even exist when I first came along. When the ice opens up in front of me, wide and wild, I don’t feel like a first; I don’t feel like a guy; I just don’t see anything in my way. When a woman wins, victory is passed around like cake; everybody gets some, wallflowers and followers and fierce ruling divas alike. Play ‘cause you love it; play ‘cause you mean it. And win for a bigger world than the one you started in.” –Cammi Granato, in a Nike ad.

Good news. The minivan is repaired. Apparently the fuel filter (and fuel line where it goes through the filter) failed and that caused the gushing gas/car stopping problem! $88 dollars later, Andy had us on the road. (I think that is the cheapest auto repair we have ever had with the minivan!)

Since we are selling both cars before leaving on our trip, we were a little worried when the car broke down. Bad timing to have a major problem. Whew!

Our car broke down on our drive to the coast today.

As we pulled onto Highway 101 in Tillamook, 100 yards from the Tillamook Cheese Factory, our car shuddered and died. It quickly began to smell like gasoline. As Tom called AAA, I called my parents and walked around the car. I looked under the car and saw a gusher of gasoline coming out from underneath–even with my limited knowledge of cars, I knew this wasn’t good. (Big Sigh)

In Tom’s discussions with AAA, they told him that they would have to call the local fire department before our car could be towed because of the presence of gasoline. They also advised us to evacuate the car and wait outside. Meanwhile, my father drove into Tillamook and picked up the girls and all of our bags, etc. AAA left Tom and I with a number to call “if we were not happy with the response time” of the fire department and towing company. (We have since learned that this actually means “we didn’t reach anyone on the telephone and left messages instead, so if no one comes out to get you, call this number.”)

Well, an hour and a half and several more telephone calls later, no one had come. (AAA seemed a little concerned that they couldn’t reach the fire department on the telephone.) Tom and I were sitting in a field located next to the car, a blanket wrapped around us, freezing in a damp fog with the wind whipping down the road.

Finally, we gave up on AAA and called the towing company directly with our AAA case number and didn’t mention anything about gasoline and/or the fire department.

About ten minutes later Nick, sporting a baseball cap studded with large metal spikes, rescued us. He said, “heck, I wish I had known you were here…I’m about a mile up the road and could have been here in 5 minutes!”

Our car is now parked at the local shop, and hopefully Andy will be taking a look at it tomorrow, if he has time of course!

We got our tickets in the mail…I guess this means that we are really going! Looking at the “Moving to Argentina” to-do list, and you know there is one, is making me feel a bit overwhelmed. Yikes. We have to sell our cars, sell some household crap, move remaining household crap into storage, change all account addresses, cancel subscriptions, notify everyone, figure out voting, learn Spanish (hee hee), get a safety deposit box, figure out continuity of health insurance, get passports in order, blah blah blah.

Heck, just washing and detailing our cars so we can sell them will take forever (we aren’t exactly obsessive about keeping our cars clean).

The first step in planning our trip to South America was mounting a PR campaign with the kids–slow and steady, nothing too flashy–to get them excited about the upcoming Offermann-Reeves exodus.

The two things that have really captivated their imaginations: the exchange rate and the easy availability of great ice cream and gelato. They are constantly running tallies of their saved allowances and then calculating what those savings would be worth in pesos and having us check their work. Who knew that a six- and a nine-year old could be so excited about monetary exchange rates?

And the ice cream…when they discovered that vendors will actually deliver gelato to your door, they truly could not think of a cooler place to live than a city with home-delivered ice cream.

Other than that, I don’t think the move is really tangible for the girls yet. That will change as we start to sell our cars and put items in storage. We’ll see if they are able to maintain their sanguine attitude as we approach our departure date.

We have decided to completely eliminate TV from our lives while in Argentina. We figure that we can get all the news/media we need from our computers. And, most importantly, the kids will have to engage their brains rather than veg out in front of the television (and we will not be tempted to used it as a quiet-the-kids magic box.)

Our kids never experienced having cable TV in the house until we sold our home last year and moved into the condo. Well I can tell you, that experiment is now over!

In our old house, in the basement, we had an HDTV hooked up to an antenna (much to Tom’s embarrassment), which needless to say, didn’t work very well. The kids would have to move the antenna around constantly in order to even tune a channel in, and then once they got a picture, they could not move or it would disappear again. Not really worth it.

Now, in our wired-for-cable condo, the kids have discovered, much to their delight, that there is a vast array of programming available to them besides a fuzzy PBS channel! They have become addicted to TV. So, we ran an experiment a few months ago where the family “went hard.” We eliminated sugar (which was really for Tom and I since we sneak dessert after the kids go to bed) and all screen time for the kids (computer, video games, tv) from our lives for a month. The kids were on board and it was magical to see the change in them. Their overall mood was much better, they were more civil to one another, and the games and projects they undertook to entertain themselves were truly inspired.

Funnily enough, when we told them that there would be no TV in Argentina, they didn’t really seem to care.

We get asked this question a lot. The short answer is that we can’t imagine living anywhere else in the United States than Portland.

But, what we are doing is a bit different than a traditional sabbatical in the sense that we are dismantling our professional existence here in Portland. We are closing up shop and pulling out, starting with a clean slate. That means we will not be returning to a cushy, high-paying job at the end of the year. (See the earlier post stating emphatically that we are crazy.)

I guess that means we really have no firm plans other than leaving for a year and seeing where that takes us. (Boy do we sound flaky when I put it like that.) I suppose that if we are having fun overseas and figure out a way to support ourselves after a year, we might remain overseas for awhile because the kids are the right age for a vagabond expat existence. If we are ready to settle back down in good ol’ USA, then we anticipate returning to Bridge City.

I am looking forward to my albino girls whipping out their Mandarin in Chinatown when we are in Buenos Aires! Little blue-eyed, pale, blond children in South America speaking Chinese is going to blow their minds.

We are hoping to maintain the girls’ Mandarin skills with some tutoring while we are there.