I tried carefully re-seating the connectors for Jomar's laptop keyboard and touchpad, to no avail, so I sent in a return request. Meanwhile, I took it back to Jomar, and he was delighted to see the battery working and the keyboard partially working. I'd still like to do better for him. The eBay vendor got back to me with a couple of suggestions to try, so I will do that. It would be much better if everything worked -- returns are a pain.
As I pulled out of our parking spot here at the apartment this morning, Dee was across the street to give me the all clear. She held her hand up to stop me for a while, then motioned in a circle for me to proceed. Or so I thought. She was actually motioning to another car to go ahead, but I didn't know that. We narrowly avoided an accident. Now she knows to use two hands if she wants to motion to another car: one to tell me to stay put, and one for the other car.
On the way into town this morning, we stopped at another nearby Todis market, looking for tortillas. I had to double park for a while (along with dozens of good friends :-) while Dee went inside, but she hit pay dirt: four packages of 8 tortillas each. The Ganziani were also able to get some packages for us at the Todis market near their apartment, so we are set for a while. Taco Tuesday saved: it had been looking like we might not have tortillas! Dee can make them, but it takes a couple of hours to make forty, so it's nice to not depend on that plan.
After we arrived at the Institute, my wife went back to down to try some rubbing compound on the side of the car which she scraped up a couple of weeks ago. It only helped a little bit -- the gouges are too deep. Bummer.
The afternoon was pretty relaxed. I did a little lesson prep for Friday, and I also spent a bunch of time in an online chat with Vodafone, trying to understand the details of our SIM card plans. Let's just say that they are as clear (and honest?) as mud. For example, early on their rep said to me that he had a great offer, to double the data on our SIM cards from 5GB/month to 10GB/month. I asked if there were any other conditions or downsides. Nope, he said, just give me the word and you'll have double the data. So I said, "go ahead", and he said "that will be 19 euro for the plan activation fee". That is typical of interactions with cell phone companies here: always trying to get extra fees, never being straightforward. At another point I complained that we sometimes got text messages telling us that they were activating a new feature on our plan that would cost us money. I said that I wanted to set it up so that I had to explicitly approve any new charges or changes. His response was that I needed to pay closer attention to whatever messages they send me. Sigh.
This afternoon we had two of our non-member students show up for a good while, one from Honduras and the other from Greece. They are both delightful girls who fit in well with the group. They stayed for home evening and seemed to enjoy it. Blake also showed up after eight hours of dancing class -- he's making friends here.
My wife gave a great lesson on faith, and she also made a simple dessert called Butterscotch Haystacks, from chow mein noodles mixed into melted butterscotch chips and peanut butter, thanks to the Hubers. Mmmm! I pulled out some cans of root beer for them to try, as well as a Dr. Pepper. For the most part, the non-US kids were pretty reserved -- to put it politely -- about both kinds of drinks, while those from the US (Blake in particular) were really excited to get such a treat!
