Antigua glory

Greetings from Antigua! I'm here this week babysitting for the world's brightest 21-month-old (who is also bilingual... beautiful). It's a nice break from regular work on top of the calm after the LSAT-taking and house-moving storm of last week.

Antigua, as I've mentioned before, is a little oasis from the normal Guatemalan life. From the volcanos surrounding the city to the wide array of tasty restaurants and coffee shops, there's goodness wherever you turn. It helps that the house I'm staying in is gorgeous, equipped witha courtyard, skylights everywhere, fireplaces in every bedroom and best of all, a dryer.

I haven't used a dryer since I arrived in Guatemala, as evidenced by the stretched-out jeans that recently started falling off me again (which I'm attributing to a decrease in Nutella crepes and rellenitos cravings). In part to amuse the little girl and in part because my emotions overtook me, I hugged the dryer when I saw it.

So this morning I was extra excited as I measured out the detergent and envisioned the warm, SNUG jeans and sweaters I would be able to wear later in the day. The feeling almost overtook the pain from the chest-to-knees array of scrapes on my body from earlier that morning. While enjoying the volcano views and cobblestone streets on a early run, I spent too much time looking at the volcano and not enough time looking at the street and faceplanted. Hard.

After putting my clothes in the washer, I went back into the kitchen where my girl was enjoying her breakfast and was be-bopping along to the High School Musical soundtrack with her when the housekeeper came in the door and immediately began running around with mops and brooms and buckets. We casually wandered out to the entryway where the stroller and washer and dryer are and found a flood.

Yeah, somehow I managed to cause a second major flood since my arrival in Guatemala. The washer overflowed, abundantly. We mopped and wrung and fixed it all up, my girl screaming "agua!! hay mucho agua!!" helpfully thoughout the whole process in case we were unaware what we were dealing with.

Thankfully there wasn't any damage, except perhaps my crushed hopes for dry clothes by noon. My orange sweater is still stretched out and wet (and the scrapes are still stinging).