A little preview of summer

Land's sake but it's hot. It's 6:30 p.m. and 102°. We came back from art class and a quick stop at the health food store and I dropped into my chair with the fan as high as it will go, directed straight at me. Normally when the weather warms up we open windows at night and close them from late morning until evening. But it was hot enough by 8 a.m. that we went ahead and closed up. Honestly I'm not sure it cooled down that much last night.

Yesterday we went to Cordoba in the afternoon (English conversation group in the morning) and walking a very short distance from where we parked the car to the art museums four blocks away about did us in. On the plus side we discovered that on Wednesdays the Palacio Ferreyra is free! Unfortunately the Caraffa Fine Arts Museum was closed because they were installing a new exhibit which will open today. So after we finished at the Palacio we trudged back to the car and drove to the other side of town.

There's a mall full of stores with materials and supplies for home construction, remodeling and furnishings. ¡Me encanta! I could spend hours in there just wandering around and looking but yesterday I was on a mission (and hot and tired) so we hunted, we bagged and we left :-) [A speaker once gave this analogy about one of the differences between men and women, that men are hunters when it came to shopping: they like to hunt, bag the prize, and go home.] 

We bought material to make slipcovers for our IKEA Poang chairs. Silly us bought the chairs with natural (i.e., off white) covers and I am tired of them looking nasty two days after they've been washed. For several years we've dreamed about having a red sofa. Not sure that will ever happen, but we're going to have red chairs soon!

Isn't that just lovely? The fabric we chose is more of a brick red but you get the idea. Now I just have to find time to actually make the new slipcovers.

So it was in the 100s yesterday and today. At least it's a dry heat. We lived with heat combined with humidity in the fair state of Michigan for twenty years and I don't miss it one bit! Although some humidity in the form of rain would be more than welcomed. It's so dry and the lake so low that they're talking about shutting off water to whole neighborhoods for extended periods of time (kind of like rolling black-outs but with water). We have a tank on the roof that water is pumped into and then gravity fed to the bathroom and kitchen so as long as the tank is full when the water is turned off, we should be okay. Just won't be able to do laundry or water the garden and we'll have to be careful with what we do use on those days.

I mentioned the English conversation group met Wednesday morning. One of the activities was creating a story. I started with a sentence, then the next person had to say what I said and add a sentence. We kept going around with each person repeating the story and adding something to it. Good for practicing pronunciation, developing vocabulary...and inducing laughter :-)

A few men have indicated an interest in joining the group so we'll probably move the get-together to an evening and Ivan will join us to help me. If we get too many people coming we'll have to split into two groups. At this point we're just playing it by ear.

This is my last week of full-time Spanish instruction. For the rest of this term on the field (two more years) I'll have two classes per week. Part of me is excited to have more time to do things with Ivan ministry-wise and part of me is terrified that I'm not really ready. Being sick for a good part of the first year slowed me down considerably but, as Ivan would say, "It is what it is." And what it is, is time to move forward. Your prayers are much appreciated!!!

Our normally quiet neighborhood was anything but quiet today. First of all, because it's so hot, the construction workers next door got an early start on the day. Like BEFORE 6:30 A.M. EARLY. Ugh. And the alarm on the house across the street (whose owner works in Cordoba) was going off all day long. About once an hour it would stop for three minutes or so, just long enough for us to get false hopes that someone had finally arrived to turn it off, and then it would start again. *sigh* A cacophony indeed...radio blaring, men talking, hammers pounding, metal clanging, alarm bells ringing...

I have a feeling the construction guys will be back early tomorrow morning too, so this southern girl is going to bed early tonight. We normally try to keep to Argentine hours but something's gotta give in this situation and looks like it will be my bedtime. Might have to invest in some earplugs too. Hmmmm, maybe I could use those early morning hours to work on the slipcovers.