Tuesday, December 22, 2009

When lightning struck...

This summer, (it's summer down here) we all wished for rain. We have been having a very bad drought here in Paraguay.

On the 3. of December it finally rained for the first time this summer. We've been getting more rain since then, and we can say now, that the drought is over in our area. The temperatures had been sky high in the days before the rains came, and usually we get thunderstorms after a heat wave.

On the 9th of December I was in town for a rare get together of old friends from my teenage years. It started to rain and Marvin called me said that he thought lightning had struck somewhere close to our house. The next day we checked out all of our appliances and found out that the following we broken: router (for the Internet), my laptop, the oven, the TV, DVD player, the satellite receiver and the keyboard (electronic organ).

I was devastated.

After a few days, we got everything to town to the various places to get the things checked out. We found out that the keyboard and the oven were repairable. And the rest was completely broken. After a lot of phone calls and worrying, we could replace the appliances and get back to life as we knew it.

I found out in this time, that we had been spending a lot of time in front of the computer and TV. I hope that I will spend my time more wisely from now on.

The silver lining is, I have a brand new laptop and a wireless connection now. The downside is: I'm not sure yet, that they can retrieve the data in my old laptop. Photos from the past three years, all of my email addresses, my bookkeeping files, my recipes, etc.



During this this week the girls and I spent a day at my Mom's house in town baking 12 kids of Christmas cookies. We had a great time and I really love this tradition. My sister, C was there with her 4 kids, and we spent the day, baking, laughing, skyping with A, and a lot of terere.



I wish you all a very merry Christmas week, making memories with loved ones.



Feliz Navidad, und Frohe Weihnachten!





(Thank you C, for the wonderful gingerbread man picture!)