Red-letter day!

Tuesday was a day to remember: we got our new fridge, and we got fiber internet! The fridge delivery guy called in the morning to say that traffic was holding him up and that he wouldn't be able to arrive by 11:30am as planned; instead it would be more like noon or 12:30pm. To translate that from Italian, it would be 1pm or later! So we told him that didn't work, because we needed to leave by noon and we wouldn't be home until about 9:30pm. He said, "you want me to come at 9:30pm?", to which I said that we'd have to re-schedule. He then offered to come at 9:30pm! We were ok with that, though it seemed strange.

So, with our morning freed up, we walked down to do a bit of shopping, including Conad for some food for us, the Chinese store for a few things, dropping off my Rosetta Stone tie at the dry cleaners (I had spilled on it), and Dee going over to the open market. She got a couple of nice necklaces and scarves for not much money. 

On the way home, I got a call from the fridge guy saying he could be there by 11:45am and asking if that would be ok. I hesitantly said yes, knowing how the schedule could slip, but the doorbell rang at 11:52am, which is about right given that they had to park the truck and carry the fridge around to the front door of our palazzo (apartment building). This is where it got strange: I kept waiting for the elevator to show up, but instead I hear the sound of people almost running up the stairs. As they got closer, I realized it was two guys carrying our fridge up the stairs, all six floors worth! They unboxed it, took away the old one, and put the new one into place in the kitchen. It was all kinda unreal. They told me to keep the Styrofoam it was wrapped in for a week before tossing it, and to not plug it in for two hours to allow things to outgas. I forgot to ask them to level the fridge, and in fact it is definitely in need of that; we'll have to figure out how to do it.

 

 

By then we had to run to Institute to start cooking for Taco Tuesday. Fortunately we had done some setup and chopping the day before, so we were able to get everything ready in time. There was a very good turnout, over twenty people signing in during the afternoon and evening!

Right in the middle of Taco Tuesday celebration, I got a call from the Vodafone technician, Marco, who was at the neighborhood wiring cabinet. He said that he had connected the modem and it seemed to be working, but there were some signal integrity issues that he was concerned about and he wanted me to check it out. So, for the second day in a row, I ran home; meanwhile he grabbed some lunch. This time, it was indeed working, about 25x faster than our old DSL!!

I almost cried with joy. After lunch, Marco called and said that the line was still noisy, so he came to our apartment for about an hour. He tried to figure out what the problem was and where the phone lines came into the apartment. Unfortunately, the main box seems to be hidden in a soffit added in the entryway which drops the ceiling by a foot or so. Marco wanted to disconnect all the other jacks in the house to get rid of the noise, but he couldn't do that without cutting into the ceiling. Fortunately, he did some some extra wiring hanging off the jack that seemed to be from an old security system; when he detached that, the system diagnostics on our line went from "red" to "yellow", which is acceptable. So he closed up the three wall boxes he had opened, completed his report, and left. Marco was wonderful! It is terrific to have good internet.

While I was home, I was able to turn on the fridge. When we got back home in the evening, the fridge was cool and the freezer was freezing. It works!

I got back into town right before 5pm, just in time to see the new possible Institute location on the floor below us. Signora Chirra showed it to Dee, me, Ugo, and Alan Garcia, one of the locals who was a GANS until he got married last year and was just called as a Seminary/Institute coordinator in his stake. The location has three bathrooms instead of one, a bunch of classrooms instead of three, including one very large one. It's over twice the square footage, but the price is only a little higher than what we are paying now. It would be great! Now we have to convince the folks who control the purse strings to let us go for it. It would take a while to do the planning and buildout, so it might not happen in our mission lifetime, but it would be wonderful.

After that we had choir. We started with only three of us: me, Dee, and a non-member from the Domenican Republic, Heilen, a friend of Dario. But by the end there were about ten singers, including three non-members! It was really quite nice. 

Jomar brought in his ASUS laptop, which has a non-functional keyboard after he spilled water on it. I had offered to buy a replacement and install it for him. He was incredulous: "you can do that?" Today he brought it in for me to see, so I could get the model number. We brought in Dee's USB keyboard from home, which she isn't using, and Jomar was excited to see that his laptop is still usable! His battery is also dead, so I'll see about getting a replacement for that too. I enjoy this kind of stuff.

Then we got to help teach the beginning English class, with Heilen as our only student. We gave her some vocabulary for travel terms, and she really seemed to enjoy it as much as we did.

One of our GANS, Dario, was quite sick last night at the Institute. He threw up and felt very cold and weak. We felt helpless to do much for him, though we did have a blanket to give him to lay under on the couch for a while. We're not sure whether (or how much) we're allowed to give OTC meds to these kids -- in the US it would probably be prohibited for liability reasons, but here we dispense a thing or two at times. Anyway, he finally left on his own, looking rather pale as he headed to the subway, but he made it home ok in about an hour. We aren't allowed to give rides to non-missionaries in our mission car, but we considered bending the rules in this case.

By the time we got home, we were pretty exhausted, but it was a very fun and productive day. We love serving here.