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It’s been a minute since our last post.

We landed back in Southern California just over 4 weeks ago. We stayed with family for the 1st 3 weeks while we found a nice house up here in the San Bernardino mountains in the national forest.

It’s amazingly beautiful… We’re at over 7K feet and near snowboarding and skiing havens, so we’re definitely going to get some snow this winter.

The summer here is absolutely perfect… It’s been in the mid 80s and it’s very low humidity around 20-25%.

We have a nice house nestled back on a quiet street not too far off from the main drag.

We have no neighbors to 3 sides of us, we’re the last house on our side of the street with only one house on the other side of the street. Here are a couple of pictures of our new back yard.

The girls are loving our new home. Zoë is getting bigger by the day and Kaylee is already sitting up on her own… She’ll be mobile in the next week or so via scooting on the floor.

There are a lot of squirrels, chipmunks and a wide variety of birds that Zoë loves to watch.

Kaylee loves playing with her big sister.

The stars are amazing. Zoë really loves looking at the stars too.

We’re loving our new home. If we continue to love our new home through our 1st mountain winter, we may stay here a while.

So what’s happening to Exploring Uruguay?

We’ve enjoyed creating this website and blog over the past year. We’ve met a ton of people and made a few good friends.

We’re going to archive our blog for people to read and learn from our experiences and keep the information on our site up to date.

If you still want to follow us and what we’re doing, you can follow us on Chrystal’s Happy Mothering blog.

If you follow Chrystal’s Happy Mothering blog, you know it hasn’t been updated since before we left Uruguay. It’s getting a face-lift and we’ll be posting on it regularly within the next couple of weeks.

Thank you for following us and best of luck to you.

Brian, Chrystal, Zoë and Kaylee

Because we’re moving back to the U.S. next Thursday, we’re having a moving sale.

First off, thank you to everyone who has responded… Literally half of our stuff we are selling has already been sold.

That leads us to the stuff that hasn’t been sold… We have some great deals on a quite a few things…

If you’d like to see a full list of everything go to http://www.ExploringUruguay.com/MovingSale

Thanks again for your support,

Brian, Chrystal, Zoë and Kaylee

Okay, the title may be a little dramatic… But, it could be the truth.

I just read an article in MercoPress about the proposed changes to the tax laws in Uruguay… This article completely blew me away.

Uruguay’s Economy Minister Fernando Lorenzo announced that a new bill has been drafted and is being sent for legislative consideration to tax overseas income and deposits.

“This means that once the bill is approved residents in Uruguay will have to pay income and wealth taxes on overseas income and from their share of assets in financial or other investments overseas” – Lorenzo

There is opposition to this, but there is good reason to do it.

The article goes on to state that an estimated U$S 8.18 billion is deposited outside of Uruguay from residents of Uruguay.

I don’t know what rate they are planning on taxing it at, but even if it was only at 10%… that would be an additional U$S 820 million a year injected into the country. That’s a LOT of money down here.

The article also goes on to state that the banking secrecy would also be loosened up to accommodate the tax office.

A formal request from a judge can open all banking records.

“The tax revenue office working with reasonably founded information or claims can have access to the taxpayers’ accounts once a Judge decides affirmatively to such a request.”

Pedro Bordaberry (who ran for President in the last election) and former Deputy Cabinet Chief Leonardo Costa are both strongly opposed to the legislation.

“Furthermore Uruguay lacks specific courts for tax issues and will be at the mercy of the officials from the Revenue Office and their interpretation of regulations, putting an unbearable pressure on the magistrates who don’t have the necessary technical support.” – Costa

“According to the draft I have read tax payers are left quite exposed and with limited rights. This is a very delicate terrain, since the country has a long tradition of protecting people’s rights (human, civil, fiscal) and the only purpose should not be to have us out of the OECD grey list.” – Costa

This could play out to be very interesting if the legislation is passed.

I have a lot of questions… a few off of the top of my head are:

• Would this include taxing SSI or a pension from the U.S. for retirees who live in Uruguay?
• Would we be “double taxed?”
• If it passes, when would it go into effect and for what tax period?
• How many people would leave Uruguay because of this?

Coupled with the dollar and euro losing value and inflation… I think the passing of this legislation could cause an expat exodus…

What’s your opinion?

Here’s a link to the article on MercoPress.

It’s set to be a great futbol (soccer) match tonight.

I think Penarol will win. My buddy Fede is a huge Penarol fan (his Penarol tattoo to the right).

I’ve went to a couple of Penarol matches and they are very exciting to watch… Don’t get me wrong, the team is cool to watch… but the fans are entertaining.

The energy at the stadium is electric.

There is expected to be 60,000 fans (both Penarol and Nacional) attending the match tonight… and I’m pretty sure that’s what everyone will be watching on T.V.

It’s pretty cool at how animated Uruguayans get about their futbol.

From my experience it’s not uncommon when people meet at a bar for them to ask who their futbol team is…

If they are opposing teams, they tend to raz each other… If they’re the same, it’s almost like “instant friends.”

I grew up around football my whole life and I’ve been to a lot of pro football games… I know some serious football fans. But in my time I’ve never seen fans as crazy or as wild as Penarol fans…

Regardless if you love futbol or not, the futbol fans here in Uruguay are pretty cool in my book.

Are you for Nacional, Penarol or another team?

A few months ago, I spilled chicken grease all down the left leg of one of my favorite pairs of jeans. I thought the jeans were a lost cause.

I washed them 5-6 times (and line dried them), to no avail.

We found Mr. Musculo at the store (we’ve seen it in both Disco and Devoto).

I pre-treated the stain with the spray and then washed them with the powder and they came clean. There is not one bit of evidence that grease was ever on them.

A while back, Zoë fell and busted her lip open and there was blood everywhere. A few large drops fell on my khaki colored shorts—I thought they would stain for sure. I’ve had a few shirts ruined from blood stains, they are super hard to get out…

A few sprays of Mr. Muscolo and the blood disappeared… literally, right in front of my eyes.

Chrystal has used it to get wine out of her shirt and it worked like a charm.

So for those of you who need to get a tough stain out of your clothes while you’re in Uruguay… check out Mr. Musculo.

This week’s recipe of the week for Thai Cole Slaw is compliments of my lovely aunt. She made it at a family function a few years back and I fell in love with it.

I have made this recipe many times and it’s always a big hit. Brian isn’t a fan of peanuts, so if you aren’t either you can omit them (or serve them on the side), but I think they make the recipe.

Dressing Ingredients

1/4 cup rice vinegar
1/3 cup olive oil
2 Tbsp sugar
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
½ jalapeno, seeded and chopped very fine (to taste)

Cole Slaw Ingredients

1 head of cabbage, shredded
¼ cup red or green onion, chopped
2 tablespoons cilantro, chopped
2 tablespoons parsley, chopped
½ cup celery, diced
1 cup dry roasted peanuts

Directions

1. Mix the dressing ingredients
2. Let marinate in the refrigerator for at least an hour
3. Mix together salad ingredients
4. Pour and toss the marinated dressing over the cole slaw just before serving

Tips and Modifications

The dressing does not have a long shelf life so it’s best to make it the day you will be using it

Hey everyone… We reorganized Exploring Uruguay to be easier to navigate and to help you find what you’re looking for faster and with greater ease.

We just switched from using Site Build It and TypePad to using WordPress with the Thesis Theme.

It took a little longer than we expected to switch servers and everything, but we’re happy with the change.

We still have a few things to iron out with the site… If you run across a broken link or something that looks funny; no worries… We’ll be fixing it soon.

Along the sides you’ll see a bunch of useful links for products and services to help you as a traveler or an expat.

Thanks for following us and enjoy the adventures to come.