A Flood and a Feriado

Hey everyone!  The last week was both eventful and normal at the same time.  On Saturday, literally within an hour after my last post, I got a call that our apartment was flooding.  I ran over and we quickly started mopping, vacuuming, anything we could do to get the water out.

This offers a nice opportunity to show you around my apartment.  This is the living room, which was filled with about a 1/2 inch of water.

Here's our dining table which served as a refuge for random stuff around the apartment.  The circuit breaker tripped and they shut our water off quickly so there was not a lot of damage, just some buckling in the floor (which will probably have to be replaced).

The kitchen had the most water but thanks to the tile floor there was no damage.  Thanks to everyone that helped clean up!  We had probably 15 people over at various times to get all the water out.  Many hands made light work, it only took about an hour.

The culprit was the washing machine (through the door at the back of this picture).  The hose normally drains into a sink, but we had a plumber over in the morning responding to (ironically enough) a water problem in the apartment below us.  He left the hose out of the sink, and I later did a load of wash.  When the washer drained, it just went all over the floor.  Oops.

May 1st is known as Día del Trabajador (day of the worker) in Chile and everything shuts down for the day.  It was a Wednesday which made the week a little interesting.  I remember having a Wednesday off by itself in 7th grade but haven't had one since.  It was a nice way to break up the week.  We slept in then went to see Iron Man 3 (theatres and a few restaurants are all you can find open).  It was good, lots of action, not a lot of plot.

In the evening we all finished our final papers for our Notre Dame online class which brought this semester to a close.  Woohoo!  Our summer class will start soon.

Last night we were invited to another asado by one of Elaine's coworkers.  It was great, it's always fun to meet more Chileans!  We had lots of great food and a great time.

Carolina, on the left, works at St. George in the first unit with Elaine.  She helped us out a couple weeks ago with a Chilean-only discount on a TV we bought for the apartment.  Thanks Caro!

Laura and I went to lunch today at a great bar/restaurant that has everything.  It was a combination of a belated birthday meal I'd promised her and a chance to plan our July travel to Machu Picchu.  Plans are coming together nicely--we'll be joined by two of my friends from the states.  It will be a good time!

The place has a music theme, I thought the vinyl menu was pretty cool.

No birthday meal is complete without dessert.  I ordered a traditional Chilean dessert made with manjar ("Chilean" for dulce de leche (Spanish for caramel) ).  Laura just ordered vanilla ice cream but it came with this fantastic raspberry chocolate sauce.  Good call, Laura.

Today has been delightfully lazy.  This week we have Octavo Aventura which was in October last year.  I'm excited, it's always nice to know the students in a spiritual context outside of class.  Watch for a post soon!