Tuesday, July 23rd, 2013

I went to bed at 11pm, got up once during the night, woke up at 6am and got up at 6:30.

I took out the garbage this morning and on the way back I checked the garage and I found 2 envelopes from Sears.  One envelope is dated May 21^st and is just an annual reminder of how to contact the Sears Holding Pension Plan department.  The other envelope is dated June 3^rd and is the response to my May 20^th telephone call requesting why 30% was deducted from my pension.  It quotes IRS information whereby “A 30% mandatory tax withholding is enforced for all foreign persons living outside the United States.”  Here’s my plan.  The first thing I’m going to do is type a copy of this information into a Word document.  The second thing is to post it to Colombia Expat Exchange to see what comments I get.  Thirdly, I will review the tax codes mentioned to see if I can figure this out myself.  Lastly, I can send the information to my tax accountant to see what their take on it is.  But that might cost me $.

The addresses on both envelopes still have errors I had requested correcting on my May 20^th call.

After a breakfast of cereal and the mango Beatriz had cut for me yesterday, I completed a couple of RS lessons.  There is a whole set of new words in this new Unit (3).  Luckily, a few I already know so it lightens my load.  I also started typing in the IRS information that Sears sent me.

I took a little nap from 10am to 11am.

Just before noon I went to Jhon’s office and worked with one of his students for a while.  Jhon mentioned the different difficulties between Spanish and English.  In Spanish you have to know that “the car” (coche) is always masculine (el coche) while “the house” (casa) is always feminine (la casa).  Everything seems to be either masculine or feminine and they just learn which it is as they grow up with the language.  I, on the other hand, have to learn them as I go.  On the other hand, Spanish has a word “para” which is used where we would use “to”, “for”, “by”, “at”, etc.  So when Spanish speakers have to learn English they have to convert “para” to the correct English word.

Lunch was the Fried Chicken Combo #2 at Frisby at Laureles Mall.  Andrew never showed up.  I did meet a new guy Diego who was waiting for his Frisby order to go.  We played a quick game of about 15 minutes and I didn’t have much difficulty controlling the situation for an easy win.  Even though he didn’t say anything in English while we were playing, he said “See you later and good luck” as he left.

At Viva mall I stopped in the restroom and noticed something very unusual; a small urinal that’s about 1 foot high.  I guess it’s for small kids.

At Exito I bought a package of floss and a bottle of creamer for my coffee.

I bought a kilo of strawberries from the guy on the corner.

Jhon was working on translating a document so I didn’t want to bother him further.

Dinner was a waffle with strawberries.  I’ll keep the rest for breakfast tomorrow.

The little girl (maybe 10 years old) across the street sounds like she’s having another attitude problem.  It seems ever week I hear her crying and wailing.  I guess she’s not getting her way about something.

Last Saturday when we bought fruits for the salad we bought a couple of my favorite apples so they were either Fujis or Galas.  We had one left over and I had it tonight but I was very disappointed.  It didn’t taste as delicious as when I had them in the States.  Luckily they have other more delicious fruits here.

I hear a lot of cheering somewhere in the distance.  I’m guessing it’s a victory celebration for Atletico Nacional winning the Colombian championship.

 

I see the $2000 in my USAA account but again it has the message “This account currently has $1200 on hold.”  I guess I’ll have to call USAA tomorrow to find out if I can write a check against it.