Chief of Police of Malibu

Well, it’s about 5pm, and after a valiant effort to overcome a 5-hour time change and 24 hours of little sleep in transit (getting up around 7:30am), Marcy and I sort of lolled around for a few hours trying to figure out how to make the stove work (we didn’t have any matches), then cooking breakfast and showering, etc, and finally hit the streets mid-morning, newspaper & phone card in hand (we can’t call out from the phone in our room).  We saw several places today, but are sort in a pickle.  The nice places near the beach are pretty expensive, and the inexpensive places are pretty crappy (not much middle ground).  The cheapest decent place we found is over $600/mo for a semi-studio.  We may go for it, as it’s pretty nice, but we’ll see.  We don’t really need to be near the beach, because the institute where I’ll be is a little closer to the center, but so far, we haven’t found any places in that part of town that will take you for less than a year.  So we may end up spending more than we thought, but that often happens, I guess (we sort of tried to account for that in budgeting, anyways).  One interesting aspect of most of these places is that they have no telephone installed–I guess most landlords are worried that vacationers from abroad would run up a big phone bill and then skip out on it.

Anyways, so we’re really tired now, after traipsing around all day in semi-dressy clothes to look like we’re a decent couple (long pants in Brazil = hot!).  Not much more to report–we’ve yet to figure out how to avoid buggy bread.  Yecch.  We’ll get it together, though.  Take care, all!

- Dan