How to move to Argentina and influence people

Now that I've managed to triage the 600+ e-mails that had piled up in my inbox over the past two weeks, I thought it would be helpful to post a quick announcement about some recent happenings:

• In case you missed it, Melanie and I have moved to Buenos Aires.
• I'm getting lots of questions about the move, so I've answered them below.
• We've set-up a travel blog and I've set up a personal blog. Details are also below.

So, quick answers to the most common questions:

• Why we moved: Basically, we want to adventure and explore. We want to travel--really travel--while we are still young and don't have much holding us in one place. And we want to learn at least one other language, and Spanish (or Castellano as the locals refer to it) fit the bill quite nicely.
• How long will we be away: We've made a commitment to to be in South America for all of 2009. We'll see where life takes us from there. :-)
• Why Buenos Aires: Hopefully this isn't such a strange decision to understand--Buenos Aires is a big city and that's appealing to urbanites like us; it's nicely located in South America,• making it easy to travel to other countries; and, most importantly, we have a few friends here.
• What we'll be doing: Well, I wish I could say that it was the beginning of the longest vacation in our lives. However, recognizing that we'd probably suffer from productivity withdrawal within the first few days, we'll continue to work for our current clients from here (though, we'll be working a little less than we have in the past). Have Internet, will travel. And, thankfully, the Internet down here is reasonably fast and reliable, and voice-over-IP technology has come a long way in the past few years.
• How to stay in touch: You can call us anytime on our new Toronto, New York, St. Louis, or Oxford numbers. If you need the details, just pop me a note. Skype also works nicely, and read on for information on our travel blog.

In summary, we're hoping to enjoy a year that is balanced between focused work for our core clients, and time set aside for more personal projects, with ample amounts of urban exploration and continental adventures. Maybe we'll come away with better Spanish, maybe some new friends, and certainly with more time for old friends (though it may be via e-mail).

Here are the details on the two new blogs:

• Travel blog: So, late last night, Melanie and I set-up a little travel blog called "Two bulls in a china shop." We'll be posting there as regularly as possible about our adventures in South America and beyond.
• I've also launched a personal blog at phillipadsmith.com. I've never been great at blogging, nor do I want to make more of a commitment to it than I do right now (which is minimal), but I did want to pull together all of the various "bits" that are scattered all over the InterWeb. So it is what it is: we'll see how it goes.

That's it for today. More soon...