#122 – The Expat Files: Realities of Living and Working in Latin America

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:03] Hi everybody, I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America. The show that tells you what it's really like to live, work, play and or retire in Latin America. I tell it just like it is, not the version they give you in those glossy travel magazines, or the picture they paint for you in those international traveler websites, where they're only trying to sell you something. What's it really like for expats living in Latin America? Well, it's time to take off those rose colored glasses and find out. So let's get started. Now it's definitely true that more and more Latin American businesses in every city and town are accepting dollars as payment for goods. That's always been true in the high and the low volume tourist areas. In those places everybody takes dollars, however they'll usually give you a pretty crappy exchange

[00:50] rate. And the only place you'll get the true exchange rate is at a local bank, and the money changers on the street will give you a terrific rate of exchange, and you'll be more than happy until you find you've been past some counterfeit money because that's one of the major ways they get counterfeit money into the circulation, is through these money changers and stupid tourists like you and me who don't know any better, and think we're so smart because we'd beat the bank by a few cents. Well, I dare any first world tourists, and any expat for that matter, to tell me which limpira, peso, boulevard, colonic, or quetzal is counterfeit and which isn't. Now usually when you walk into a small business in Latin America, you'll see taped on a wall or under a glass display case, the counterfeit dough that they've been past, in their currency. Usually along with some counterfeit US dough too, 10s, 20s, 50s, 100s, that's some stupid

[01:36] cashier took in and got fired for doing so. Now I don't know if you've ever handled counterfeit US money, but there's good counterfeits and bad counterfeits, and down here in Latin America most of them are pretty bad, US currency counterfeits I mean. When you run into one, there's obviously something different about it, and when you hold it up next to the real thing, it's beyond obvious. But when it comes to the local money, unless it's been just printed out at the corner internet cafe with the ink practically running off the dictator's face, even me, and I've been down here 20 years, can't tell the difference between the real thing and the funny money that they just printed out with a good inkjet printer or copy machine. And these days, little by little, things are changing a bit. It's not just the tourist areas that are taking US dollars, and like I said, beware of a really crappy exchange rate, unless you go to a real bank. And how crappy? Some of them will take 5, 10, or even 15% more than the regular bank exchange rate.

[02:26] You see that all the time in tourist towns. In fact, you wonder how first world tourists could even fall for such a scam, since in most busy little towns down here, there's a bank on every corner. Well the common way I've found in tourist towns how these businesses sting ya, is that they don't post the exchange rate, and you don't know how bad it is till you actually go up to the register, you buy your stuff and then they give you the total in dollars. And at that point, it's the rare tourist that does the calculation and figures out he's been stung, especially on a small purchase from 10 to let's say 25 dollars. All you know is there's a big sign that says we accept dollars, though they don't tell you what the exchange rate is and that's just how they like it. Of course they'll tell you if you ask them, but they count on the fact that a certain high percentage of people will never do that. They know that the average tourist doesn't want to make a stink in front of a line of people. I mean none of us really want to make a fuss and look like a cheapskate.

[03:14] Anyway, just remember, in all tourist towns they accept dollars. But remember this, even in the biggest of tourist towns, some of the small businesses will not take 50's or 100's, they'll take up to 20's and that's it. Now if you remember, I always recommend that you stash a few brand new 100 dollar bills in your zipper belt, and I talked about that in the previous show, and how to go about getting a belt like that that looks absolutely like a regular belt, but has a secret zipper compartment inside along the back. And that's in case you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you get robbed. Well if that happens, I'll take your fanny pack, and your wallet, your camera, and your smartphone of course, but they won't take your pants or your belt. At least I've never heard of any case where that's happened in my 20 years down here. And as far as the possibilities of getting robbed, if you want to know my record, I've been down here 20 years plus, I've been to all 20 Latin American countries, and in some

[04:02] of the best and some of the worst places. And I've only been physically robbed twice, and in that time I had two house break-ins, and both of those occurred when the house wasn't really finished yet, so I really can't count those. Because when your house is still being built and people are in and out all the time, well, things can go missing, right? And in those two times I was physically robbed personally, I was robbed at gunpoint once in a Burger King parking lot in broad daylight in front of a parking lot guard, and that was about 18 years ago when I still didn't know my way around that well. And the other time I was robbed was in another parking lot, believe it or not, with no guns or knives or anything like that. In fact, it was a much more cunning robbery where thieves applied diversionary tactics, and during that distraction made off with my briefcase, and I got a hand it to him, it was pretty slick. Anyway, I have to mention that because I do get emails all the time from people asking

[04:49] me about the real dangers in Latin America, and basically, how likely it might be that you'd get robbed or assaulted. Because obviously that's what they read and hear about in the papers up north, if it bleeds it leads, right? And from my experience down here, and so many other expats that I've talked to, there are a few easy rules you can follow, and you'll probably never get robbed. Unless you've got a case of low self-esteem and you like to demonstrate to everyone that you've got Rolexes, golden platinum jewelry, and diamond rings. If you do that and get robbed, it's your own fault. But if you keep a low profile, there's a very slim chance that you'll ever get robbed or assaulted. As long as you know the safe and the dangerous areas in the city or place that you're traveling or living in. Because even in the cities that are considered the most dangerous in Latin America, all you do is ask a cab driver, and he'll tell you which zones are safe and which ones aren't.

[05:34] Just ask him which zones or neighborhoods are safe to walk in alone, and have him point him out on your map, and you'll have a great start. And it's that easy, really. Now most big cities in Latin America, especially the ones in the Altiplano, those cities and towns with that excellent, eternal spring-like weather all year round, the ones I always recommend expats set up shop in, most medium in large cities in Latin America, aren't set up on a nice criss-cross grid like your towns in the states. You know, all the avenues running north and south, and the streets running east and west, and if you're in a car and you have an address, you can find it in about 10 minutes by just keeping your eye on the street signs and watching whether the numbers are getting higher or lower. In fact, we're kind of spoiled up in the United States because most of our cities are laid out that way. But here in Latin America, especially in that Altiplano region, if you just landed in town

[06:21] for the first time, you could really get lost in a hurry. In so many of these Latin American cities, it's almost impossible to find your way around. And if you have an address, good luck unless you have a friend who lives there or hail a taxi. Because in the Altiplano cities, hundreds of years ago when cities were first laid out, they were laid out on high plateaus between mountain ranges. So down here in Latin American cities in the Altiplano, you'll see the central historic and cultural and business districts very close to each other on a flat and level plain. And that's how these cities were started 2, 3, even 400 years ago, when their populations were quite small under 50,000. And now some of these cities have gotten very big, and some are way into the millions. And as these cities grew, it didn't take long for them to spill out beyond that flat plain where they had been originally laid out.

[07:07] Because of these dark geographic features around here, cities couldn't spread out in the normal way, like on a nice square grid. For example, in these Altiplano regions, you could have a flat plain of a mile or two square, then you run smack into a vertical mountain or a deep valley, called a barranco in Spanish. And you can't populate the low lands of those valleys. Because in the rainy season, the deepest part of those valleys, which would seem like a good place for a city to spread out, well when it rains, those valleys become rivers. So in order for a city to spread out properly, the city fathers would cut a road or put a bridge through a short valley or a mountain pass, and link it up to the next flat area nearby, which becomes the next big area of population growth within that city. And after some years when that area fills up with people, the city bothers cut another

[07:54] road or build another bridge, through the next nearest convenient mountain pass or valley, to another flat or nearly flat area, and the process repeats itself until you got a pretty big city on your hands, though it's not on a nice cross checkered gridded map like the vast majority of cities are up in the United States. So anyway, if you were to take an aerial shot of some of these big cities in Latin America, you'll see that these big metropolitan areas are just a combination of 5, 10, 15, or even 20 of these little individual populated zones interconnected by bridges and just a few small stretches of highway. Take for example Guatemala City, Guatemala. It's in the Altiplano region, so it's got the eternal spring weather all year round, and it's got about 2 million people in the metropolitan and surrounding areas, but it's not actually one big city kind of smooshed together like Chicago or Detroit.

[08:42] Instead, it's made up of about 21 separate little islands, departments, or zones, interconnected by bridges and very short segments of highway. So if someone says that they live in Guatemala City, and you ask them, well, where? What part of the city do you live in? They might say something like this, I live on 7th Avenue, 15th Street, Zone 7, and everyone who lives in Guatemala City will have an address like that, a street, an avenue, and a zone. And that's how most addresses in all Altiplano cities are too. Now as far as expats and expat wannabes are concerned, the nice thing about that fact is that when somebody tells you what zone they live in or what zone they have their business in, if you're knowledgeable about Guatemala City, you'll know exactly what kind of neighborhood they're living in. You'll know if it's dangerous, if it's safe, if the houses are palatial or pieces

[09:31] of crap, if the roads are good, if the shopping is decent, you'll even know if it's got good quality schools and hospitals or not. It's kind of like a person who lives in New York who says, I live in Greenwich Village, or I live in the Bronx, or I live near Washington Square. Well, if you know anything about New York, you instantly get a picture in your mind of the setting that person happens to be living in. But of course, as we know, if you say the Bronx are Manhattan, it doesn't narrow things down that much because they've got such a mix of everything that just because you say you live in Manhattan, that doesn't necessarily mean you're rich, even though some of the apartments rent for 10 grand a month. You could be paying $2.50 a month and living over a garage in Hell's Kitchen. You get the idea. So knowing a big residential district in a big city in the States doesn't let you necessarily narrow things down so much. Not like knowing a geographical area narrows things down in Latin America.

[10:19] In that case, it really does. For example, Guatemala City. If someone were to say to you, I live in zone 10, you can instantly generalize that a guy like that is way above average in income and is more than likely college educated. The same thing goes if you run into a person that happens to be living in zones 13, 14, 15, and 16. So if you're in Guatemala City and you're looking for a house or an apartment, all you have to do is look in the classified ads in the real estate section and they'll have all the properties and rental units listed under those particular zones. So if you want to live in a nicer, safer, little higher rent neighborhood, you hone in on the properties in zone 10, 13, 14, 15, and 16. Those are also the zones you want to spend your leisure time in because they're safe, have nice restaurants, are clean, have good infrastructure, and first world style shopping

[11:08] centers. And if you want to buy or rent something cheaper, a little scruffier, a little less secure, and a little more middle class Latin style that is, you look in the real estate classifieds in the paper and you look for properties in zone 4, zone 5, zone 9, zone 11, and zone 12. Now those zones have some very nice apartments and houses too, however, like I said, the neighborhoods themselves are a little dingier, the traffic's a bit more disorganized, the cars are a bit junkier, and everything is just a little bit more downscaled than the other zones that I just mentioned. And like I said, you can always find a nice house and apartment in one of those zones and you'll pay about a third to a half as much than you'll pay in those premium zones like zone 10, 13, 14, 15, and 16, but it doesn't take long to find these things out once you land in a Latin American city or town and you start talking to the people and like I

[11:57] said, the cab drivers. And of course, your lawyer will have all those details for you too because when you're ready to rent or buy, he'll be involved in that transaction, signing the paperwork and getting all the legal documents together, and you can be sure that he'll give you a heads up on the zones that are good to live in and work in and the ones that aren't. And what I've said about qualifying where you work and where you live by what zone you live in is true in hundreds of Latin American cities, especially like I said, the ones in the Altiplano. And not all of those cities will be broken down by zones. They might use other names like Spanish heroes or biblical names or Christian names. For example, San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, is broken down into six districts, just like zones in Guatemala, and each of those districts is broken down into two or three little subdivisions named after priests and saints and brutal genocidal dictators

[12:46] and historical landmarks and stuff. So if someone from San Salvador says, I live in district five, Montserrat, you don't want to be visiting that guy's house on foot because that's a poor and lower middle class area, a high crime rate area. So you don't want to look for houses or apartments there either. You get the idea. Now, one of the reasons why I mentioned zones and districts and the like specifically as the way the cities are arranged in Altiplano regions is because these zones and districts are segregated geographically and are also very segregated as to the type of housing businesses and specific classes of people that live there. And that's why you can generalize so much when a person says he lives in a particular district or zone, and you can get a really great idea of the kind of housing and the type and quality of businesses that exist when somebody mentions the zone that they're in.

[13:33] When you talk about zones or districts in the big cities in Latin America, many times you're talking about huge contrasts in lifestyle and socioeconomic class. For example, in Guatemala City, you don't want to walk down the street alone in zone one, two, seven, eighteen, and nineteen. Not if you don't have to. I just don't recommend those zones for tourists and expats. And actually, there's no reason you really have to go into any one of those zones. They don't have any special products that you can't buy or services you can't get in some of the wealthier, cleaner, and nicer kept up zones. And back to what we were talking about before. If you keep out of those last zones that I mentioned, it's unlikely that you'll ever get mugged because those zones are where the crime is. Not to say that it won't happen to you, but if you hang in certain low end zones or districts, you're tempting fate. So my advice for those of you looking for an apartment to rent or buy, get a nice city

[14:22] map of the Latin American town or city that you want to live in, get a couple of light colored felt pens, go to your lawyer's office, and have him or his English speaking assistant mark off the zones and districts. Make sure they delineate the low, medium, and high rent parts of town, too, and the places that are the most safe and the most dangerous. The whole process might only take fifteen minutes to a half an hour, but by then you'll know what everybody who's living in that city already knows. Which places you can walk around without any trouble at all, and which places that would be best to avoid. The fact is we know that every city in Latin America and in the first world has its good and bad sections. The fact is, every day I pick up a Spanish language newspaper, and normally page one through five are all about the crimes that have been committed the day or night before. And it's never a surprise to me when I read into the article that 95% of all these crimes

[15:10] occur in the same particular zones and districts all the time. The ones that I always recommend that expats and tourists stay out of. And you know what? Normally expats do stay out of those zones. That is unless you have to drive through a bad zone to get to a nicer one in another part of town. And though in some of these zones you wouldn't want to walk down the street alone, when you're in a car you really don't have to worry about a thing. And the problem is, the first world people, the tourists that is, that come down here and get themselves in trouble, are the ones that are trekking through those bad zones oblivious to the fact that they shouldn't be traipsing through those places alone. Not that you're going to get mugged every time you walk through zone one in Guatemala City or district five in El Salvador. It's just that that's where 95% of the crimes occur. So why go there? But tourists will be tourists, especially backpackers.

[15:56] And when they hear that you could get a five or seven dollar a night hotel room in zone one, Guatemala City, or district five in San Salvador, well guess what? That's a place where low budget, backpacking first world travelers like to go. Because it's beyond dirt cheap. I mean isn't it satisfactory enough to go to another safer zone where you might pay 21 dollars a night for a nice safe hotel in a good area? Well the fact is, sometimes when I talk to these backpacker tourists, I get the feeling that they're in competition to see how low they can go. That means the guy who gets the cheapest fleabag motel on this trip wins. Or gets bragging rights or something. And that's why I really can't feel sorry for a first world backpacking guy who gets mugged in a crappy section of town right outside his six dollar a night hotel.

[16:43] Poor guy. And I don't know about you, but I was never really into that camping or backpacker thing myself. When I go on vacation I don't want to punish myself. And I don't like sharing a bathroom with six chain smoking backpackers from Yugoslavia. Yeah and I know there's no Yugoslavia anymore. But it sounds a lot better than six chain smoking backpackers from Serbia, Croatia, and Montenegro. Well as usual I got off the track a little bit there because I was talking about changing your money down here in Latin America. And how everybody in tourist towns will accept your dollar bills, up to a twenty dollar bill that is. And that in those tourist towns, everyone but the banks will give you a pretty ratty exchange rate for their funny money. And if you do bring some fresh 50's or 100 dollar bills down, no problem, you can change those at banks, even though the local small business operators probably won't take anything

[17:28] over a 20. But here's a big reminder, don't ever bring down to Latin America. Any US dollar denominations that are in the least bit rumpled, torn, or disfigured. Because not only will the small businesses not accept them, but the banks won't take them either. And to tell you the truth, I don't know who the culprits are, but any of you people out there who write with a pen or a pencil on a dollar bill or a 20 or a 100 or whatever, well you're screwing us all up down here because no one down here in business, including a bank, will accept a US dollar denomination with the least bit of a pen or a pencil mark on it. And forget about tears, but there's the smallest little crack or questionable crease on the edge of a US dollar bill. Of any denomination, forget it, no one will take that either, not even a bank. But the kicker is, if you go to an ATM machine down here, nearly everyone will spit out dollars.

[18:17] At least that's an option on most machines, so you can get them if you want them. And they'll be in US 20's. But I'm not kidding you when I say, sometimes up to half of those 20 dollar bills that you get out of the ATM machines won't be accepted by small businesses or banks. Not even the bank who has its logo in big bold letters on that machine. Which begs the question, if banks down here won't accept dollar bills with ink and pen marks on them or with even the smallest little scratch or tear, why in the hell are they spitting out bills like that in the ATM machines and where are they getting them? Because if they don't accept them from business people, travelers and expats like you and me, you can only assume that they must have some clients that walk into the bank with suitcases full of money, money that's slightly used, rumbled, marked up and torn, and they're accepting that stuff, no questions asked.

[19:05] And those US 20's eventually end up in those ATM machines and tourists and expats like me end up getting them. Which sounds to me like the perfect scenario for a little backroom money laundering if you ask me. The question is, what is the origin of those 20 dollar bills coming out of those ATM machines? It sounds like it could be a good investigative news story. What do you think? Now to change gears a little bit, you know I'm always talking about the fact that Latins just aren't big on details, especially in business and that's why expats do so well. Now in the last few weeks I've been checking out some real estate properties for sale and for rent and I've noticed that on the high end, when you're talking about houses and condos at 150,000 or above, and down here that's considered the high end. Well I can tell you with 100% certainty, even at the high end they are absolutely lacking

[19:50] in the details. And as usual, they don't even know it. For example, last week I was looking at some condos for sale, in a really nice residential tower. I mean the concrete work was perfect, the stucco great. All the walls were plaster and to the highest standard. And plastering is a lost art up in the first world, except maybe in churches. And in this building there was no drywall at all. The woodwork all solid teak and exotic woods. They used windows imported from a high end German window firm. It had real wood parquet floor, an expensive Spanish tile, and high end bathroom treatments and fixtures. And they even had real granite countertops all through the kitchens, and the bathroom sink enclosures. And this residential tower was in the best section of town. The smallest unit, a 1700 square foot job, was going for 170,000 bucks.

[20:38] Which is exactly $100 a square foot. Right now in the United States the average cost of building a condominium is $125 a square foot. But to build this kind of structure, you're looking at $250 a square foot in the United States. So still down here in Latin America, at $100 a square foot, well that's still a half to a third of what you'd pay up in the first world. And did I mention for that you get two indoor parking places, a pool, a health club, gymnasium, a common area for parties or business conferences, and the maintenance is $170 a month and that includes your water, your garbage, and your security. And the building is absolutely secure. And anywhere in the United States if you had a condo in a building like that, you'd be paying at least $300 a month for your maintenance fee. And here's another case, the maintenance fee, where you're paying just a little more than half of what you'd pay up in the first world for the equivalent thing.

[21:25] And I really must emphasize that this building and the views are spectacular. And it's in one of the most upscale areas in the city. And not anywhere near the congestion and smog of the central business district. Yet it's only about 10 minutes away by car. And here I am, a gringo looking at this fantastic place. Really only to gather data about the price of real estate and condos right now. Not interested at all in buying or renting, but just feeling out the market. Knowing that there is a real estate bubble here too, and it's gonna burst pretty soon. Which means a condo like this just might go for 100 grand or even less than a couple years. Or whenever that real estate bubble blows, because it certainly will. Anyway, the real estate woman asked me, after I'd seen that condo and even some larger ones within that building, a 2,000 square foot job and a 2,500 square foot job.

[22:11] Going for 200,000 and 250 respectively. Well the real estate person, proud as punch because she was representing such a fantastic building. Thinking I'd be impressed because it was first world in every way. At least that's what she thought. Anyway, she asked me my opinion. And I said this, if I bought a condo in this building, the first thing I would do is tear out the tile or the woodwork or both because they just don't match. You have nice beautiful teak doors and a mismatched brown tile on the floor, which in turn doesn't go at all with the parquet floor in the kitchen. Three different browns and they just don't match. And then I told her, next I'd tear out the closets. Because they were made out of particle board of all things, yet the doors are solid teak. I mean if you can afford solid teak doors, why would you ever put particle board shelving

[22:57] in? In fact that particle board was so thin the shelves were warping already. And it was a brand new unsold unit. And then there was no border or kick plate where the floor meets the wall. You know, the place where the broom and the vacuum touches every time you clean a floor. Well if you don't have some kind of protection there, a wood or tile kick plate or molding, after a while the paint will all be scuffed up at the level of your shoe where the wall meets the floor. And then I took the Realtor into the kitchen. A very first world big kitchen with a central island and pure granite tops, and I mean some of the best countertops I've ever seen. Pure granite. They weren't synthetic marble or Corian either. But guess what? You had all that fine granite and very fine teak and glass cabinetry, but the sink was a cheap stainless steel thing right out of a trailer court.

[23:44] And the faucets just bargained basement that you'd get at Home Depot. And I told her so. I told the Realtor, look I'd rip all this out, and I said, you know I can't believe you have a nice place like this with all this high quality structural stuff, and you screwed up on the details. In a condo like this in the United States or Europe, you'd have a porcelain ceramic sink like American Standard or a Kohler or something, and medium to high end faucets, not this junk. Then I said, you know, I can't believe you didn't spend the extra 100 bucks and get a real porcelain sink. That's the killer. But here's the part that always blows my mind in high end houses and condos in Latin America. I walked into the master bedroom where they have the master bathroom. And in that master bathroom they've got a nice toilet and sink, halfway decent faucets, and a bidet. Now there's one thing you have to know about Latin construction.

[24:30] Whenever they build a high end hotel, condominium, or housing unit, and I'm talking high end here, which means they have central hot and cold running water, which believe me is really a rarity in middle and upper middle class houses, which I spoke about on my last show so I won't go into it here anyway. Here they have a stainless steel piece of junk sink in the kitchen with low grade trailer court faucets. But in the master bathroom they've got a bidet. A high quality ceramic porcelain bidet. And the fact is, every once in a while when you go into an elegant Latin American home, a real high end home, you'll walk into a bathroom and you'll see a bidet. Now I've questioned Latin Americans about bidets, mostly high end Latin Americans because they're the ones who'd come in contact with those things. Anyway I've never met a Latin American who really knew what they were for.

[25:15] I mean most people in the US don't know what they are either because you almost never see one up there. Though you do see them around Europe once in a while. Just another French invention like the snuff box that nobody really cares about I guess. But down here in Latin America they're clueless. You think, if you had one in your house, you'd know what the damn thing was for. But to give you an example, I have a very rich friend, and he's only rich because his dad is a connected architect, anyway they have bidets all through their house. And in his particular bathroom off his bedroom, he's got a bidet, and one day I went in there to use the facilities, and he had his dirty socks soaking in it. Jeez is that what they're for, I should have known. And in talking to a wealthy lady friend of mine, who has a bidet in her house too, when I asked her what it was for, she said she's pretty sure it's a special European toilet for little boys to pee in. And that's how tuned in, or should I say clueless, these upper class Latin folks really are.

[26:04] And when I asked the realtor, who should really know better, why they even put them in high end housing units, she shrugged and didn't have much of an answer for me. She said, tradition I guess. And then she said, you know what, I know a lot of people who have them, but nobody uses them. And people with money think they have to have them, because wealthy Europeans always have them. And then I told her, you know, wealthy Americans wouldn't want those things in their bathroom. Not because they don't work, they're actually considered much more sanitary than the customary way of cleaning your Hugo Chavez. However, they take up a lot of space and they sit right in the middle of the bathroom. And then I remember the bidet story that expat Eddie told me. The first time Eddie went to Columbia, he was staying at a big old elegant hotel in Cartagena that naturally had a bidet in the bathroom. And Eddie, who'd never seen one before and didn't know what it was, told me he came

[26:50] back to the hotel really blasted one night and thought to himself, man, this is a really great hotel. He told me he'd never been in a bathroom that had such a handy receptacle for partiers who spent a lot of time on the bathroom floor. Like him. He thinks every bar should have one. But anyway, when I made all those negative comments to the realtor about that white trash stainless steel sink, the bad color scheme and the missing floorboard kick plate and the warping particle board closets and the bidet and all that, well, the realtor seemed genuinely shocked because, like I said before, Latins are not complainers. And I'm sure every Latinette step foot in that condo would say it was high class and first world. And in some ways it really was, except for those pesky details, south of the border down

[27:36] Mexico way, you've been listening to the expat files, living in Latin America, coming to you each week from somewhere south of the border. And don't forget you can email me on anything at all about Latin America, the expat files at gmail.com. Once again, the expat files at gmail.com. See you next time. Nos vemos.