Week 16: Project 365, the 2016 Edition

Sunday, April 24

For the longest time I've been meaning to show how GNC prices have risen since we bought our car. GNC (natural gas) is much cheaper than regular gasoline, but with its meteoric rise in price, it's not quite the deal it used to be.

In just over four years the price jumped from $1,499 pesos per cubic meter to $10,94. I wanted to get a picture of the whole sign so you could see how the other prices have risen, too, but the new signs with their digital lights just turn into glaring blurs unless you get really close with the camera.

Tuesday, April 26

We had planned to go to Sta. Rosa today, taking a load out and bringing the books and bookshelves back. But Ivan got sick on Monday so we decided to postpone a day. Probably a good thing, because we ended up having to get our car fixed. It went to two different mechanics for two different problems that took all day to resolve. It gave us time to get some other things done. Ivan's still going through his tools. Most have sold, and with several deliveries this week, he needed to sort out who was getting what.

Wednesday, April 27

The morning started way too early for me, when I woke at 3 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep. My mind kicked into high gear (not surprising since we have so much going on right now) so we didn't even need the alarm to get us up early to go for my final blood work. The idea was to get that done and come home for a nice breakfast.

But on the way back we decided to make a quick stop and see what we needed to do to get the '08' document which is necessary in order to sell our car. That quick stop turned into a three hour ordeal due to the fact that my initial Argentine ID was in my maiden name, since that's the way it's done here, but my final DNI is in my married name -- after they decided it was vital to honor my documents from the U.S., which are all in my married name. Anyway, we bought the house and the car before being issued the final DNI so even though the ID # remained the same, the change of last name has created a headache. In the end we did get it done, and finally had breakfast about 11:30 a.m.

Right after breakfast (or should we call it brunch?) we headed out with the fully loaded, quite heavy trailer. We loaded it the night before, thank goodness, so it was only necessary for Ivan to strap things down before we left. Sadly he got interrupted and side-tracked in the process and didn't quite finish the job, so in Alta Gracia we lost a small bin that fell off when we went over a speed bump. It only had one thing in it, but it was of great sentimental value: our African drum. Someone alerted us to the fact that something had fallen off but by the time we turned around and got back, we saw a man hopping back in his truck and driving off with our drum :( We turned around yet again, but never saw the truck. Es lo que hay.

We simply unloaded everything from the trailer into either the house or garage, then began filling boxes and more boxes with books. You might remember that when we moved into the casita, we took our bookshelves and books out to Sta. Rosa. Anyway, we ended up with 14 boxes of books and three bookshelves loaded onto the back of the trailer by the time we were finished.

Some books remained in Sta. Rosa for people to enjoy when they use the house, but the vast majority of our personal library was divided up and given to different people and organizations. We delivered the bookshelves and two boxes of books to one family and 7 boxes to another family before finally arriving home around 11 p.m. Long day, to say the least!

Thursday, April 28

Charlie came over in the morning to help Ivan load the trailer, this time with lots of tools, the workbench, and a door. Then we headed to Cordoba, where we made one delivery and had lunch with our friends, the Caseres family. Their girls were thrilled with the box of children's books I gave them and immediately started looking through to see what they wanted to read first.

Then we traveled across town to Eric and Karen's house where we unloaded the remainder of tools along with a couple boxes of books that they're delivering to a seminary for us. That saved us an extra stop. We left the door on the trailer while we visited with them, and then loaded some other things of theirs and followed Eric to a house they are getting ready to restore in another town. It reminded us a bit of what the casita looked like the first time we saw it. They are currently collecting building materials and supplies, and have a dream of creating a getaway spot that they can enjoy, and so can missionaries and pastors.

Before we left their house in Cordoba, Eric climbed the lemon tree right outside their front door, to pick fresh lemons for us to bring home. Most of the lemons were still green, but near the top there were some ripe ones.

Friday, April 29

It did my heart good to see this photo our friend took of the books we delivered Wednesday night, already unpacked and on the shelves!

A friend came by in the morning to pick up the tools he was buying, plus three boxes of books we were passing along, and stayed for lunch. It was nice to catch up! Hopefully the whole family will get out to see us in Sta. Rosa before we leave.

Late afternoon we went to visit Magdalena and Nestor. She has had cataract surgery on both eyes in the past couple months, the most recent one just a week ago. Between surgeries, she painted this gorgeous picture for us!

We gave her several photos and let her decide which she wanted to do. She chose this view of the Rio San Antonio next to our house here in Carlos Paz. This is the view we see every day that we walk. Nice, heh?!