Friends and Floods

We've had a good last couple of weeks here. First, I have two new friends who are Americans adapting to the south out of love for a boy... Stephanie and Claudio got married last Friday and Chelsea and Alvaro are young and in love. They all came over to eat Mexican food and participate in the marvel that is two completely different conversations in two different languages going on simultaneously. It was great fun, and we managed to find such treats as cilantro, limes and avacados to make it somewhat authentic...

Mario pulled out all the stops trying to make my first married birthday a good one... including tickets to the opera. Here you can see a little bit of what a beautiful theater we have here.

Then, last Thursday we had essentially flash floods here in Rosario. I could not believe the amount of rain that fell in such a short time. We have an enclosed patio and at 4 in the morning we just sat there staring as the drain could no longer handle the amount of water and the patio started to fill. Luckily, the rain stopped about 15 minutes later and we didn't have any damage, but I am now motivated to flood-proof our home and get insurance! Below is a shot of the street in front of our house that literally became a river. It's hard to see, but the water filled the entire street and was up onthe sidewalks. You can see a white bottle floating by. About 2 hours after it stopped raining and there was hardly a puddle left, but there was so much in such a short amount of time it just couldn't drain quickly enough.

More House...

One day I was having particularly pointless fights with the phone company trying to get our phone hooked up (which btw we STILL don't have) and Mario bought me an old door to cheer me up. Such a great husband I have!!! I actually really wanted to door and we made it into a headboard that he claims is too tall but we have yet to locate an electric cutting device so for now it stays as is.

An acquaintance of ours came over a couple of days after I finished the headboard, walks into the bedroom and says "oh, I don't like that at all." I was SOOO bugged. The one time she came to our apartment she told me she didn't like the painting I bought in France which is now in the entry way. What's with people thinking honesty is always the best policy??


So here are the before and afters of the bedroom, you can see both ends of the BIG closet we installed that I love. Also you can see the window that had at least 100 coats of paint on that we stripped. SO MUCH MORE WORK than we thought... And I'm really happy with the wall color, but after I got it all painted I realized it doesn't quite match the blanket at the end of the bed, and Mario responded "REPLACE the blanket, we're not repainting again!!" So looks like the blanket has to go.