When we got home Thursday night, we heard a dripping sound, but figured it was just the freezer defrosting. When we got up Friday morning though, there was still a dripping sound. As the morning progressed, water started to seep out from behind the fridge. We had noticed some sheet metal behind the fridge the night before, but didn't want to mess with it. The water sound convinced us that we were missing something, so we pulled out the fridge, and this is what we found.
This was the point at which I got in touch with Pieded to try and figure out the whole story. Turns out that she failed to mention that the reason the fridge was fried was because water was coming through the ceiling behind it. So after back tracking, I got the full story of what had happened on Wednesday. Piedad had called David who does the building maintenance. He discovered that water was leaking from the 6th floor, through the 5th, to our apartment on the 4th. Even though the official holiday weekend starts on Thursday, no one from 6 or the building administration answered any of his calls, so he used the sheet metal and a big bucket to design a kind of funnel system, so our apartment wouldn't flood. Of course, Piedad didn't tell us that a bucket was filling up behind our fridge, so it took until it overflowed Friday morning for us to realize.
At this point, I was already taking some deep breaths. I figured water leaking through two stories of an apartment building was worth phoning the embassy housing duty phone. The person in charge of the duty phone was a local GSO employee who didn't speak any English. More deep breaths necessary. I tried to explain the situation as best I could in my Spanish which does not include the words for sheet metal, flooding, or fried fridge circuits. I finally took the picture above to send to him. He was very nice, but I didn't have much hope that he was going to be able to do anything. His U.S. boss also didn't answer the phone, because it's a holiday. To his credit, he did try to call the building guard. The guy didn't know anything about it, and came up to see the situation for himself. How can the security guard not be aware that water is leaking through two stories of the building he's in charge of? More deep breaths. Basically, the conclusion from everyone is that since it's Semana Santa (aka Holy Week), no one is going to be available to do anything until Monday. Of course, that doesn't mean that the leak is going to be fixed or that we're going to get a new fridge on Monday. It just means that someone may actually answer the phone on Monday. I just keep taking deep breaths and trying to wish myself back to the beach.
With all that though, I still had to figure something out for Easter. I don't usually like to cook a big meal under the best of circumstances, and these were certainly not the best of circumstances. Instead, I decided we could do an outing on Saturday when things wouldn't be crowded and have a simple celebration at home on Sunday. Jeff wanted a haircut, and Elena really wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese, so Atlantis seemed like the best decision. Right outside the haircut place, they had a giant piano, which the girls had fun playing with.
After a while, they were ready for the next batch of fun, so we went up to Chuck E. Cheese. I got 25 tokens (one for me!), and let them go. I got pictures of them with some of their favorites.
Viv decided to save her winnings, but Elena cashed hers in for a lollipop. The parent treat was lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe. The girls like it too, and they were thrilled to be sitting under Madonna's dress.
Viv likes their steak, and Jeff and I like to split the appetizer platter. Elena had a sampler of macaroni, fries, and chicken tenders. We all enjoyed watching and discussing the music videos. While Jeff was trying to forward Vivian's music education, Elena was just rocking out on her air guitar.
She's such a goofball.
On Easter proper, I treated them to blueberry muffins for a special breakfast. They had a hard time waiting, and built a "fort" to distract themselves.
Once we had all digested our muffins, I filled our collection of plastic eggs with jelly beans and hid them around the house. It's a good thing I didn't hide them too cleverly, because the girls are NOT good at finding things. Jeff and I had to offer plenty of hints. At the end though, they were very happy with their loot.
For our "Easter lunch" we ordered some yummy food from Ugly American and sat down as a family to watch Sir David Attenborough's latest, Our Planet. It was a big hit, especially the part about the flamingos ;-)
Vivian has spent most of the day working on her novel, so she wasn't as into the show as Elena was.
This afternoon, Jeff's buddy and his twin daughters came over to play. Vivian read him the first chapter of her novel, and Elena and the girls played happily for hours, including a yoga break.
For our Easter evening, we hung out with some other friends to watch Game of Thrones. They had gotten a special bottle of White Walker which we all got a kick out of. When you put it in the freezer extra things appear, like Winter Is Here written on the side. I tried to take a picture, but it's a bit hard to see.
It definitely added to the fun of the evening.
While it was far from a traditional Easter weekend, I think it worked out just fine. Despite some of the frustrations of living in Colombia, we have a nice home and good friends. That, plus some jelly beans, makes for a pretty good Easter.
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