Settlers of Catan
Last weekend was a lot of fun. Sunday afternoon, after some pampering at the spa, we hosted a Settlers of Catan afternoon party (a board game). We had Howie, Petit, Joseph, Sunera, Joe, and Christy. The game lasted for three hours – lots of fun and snacking.
Honey, with a coin next to her for scale
Our big news of the week is the guest puppy in the house! One of our friends is on R&R in Washington, so we have Honey, their darling little Chihuahua, for a while. She’s so cute! It’s fun to have a dog in the house, although Flavia doesn’t really share that opinion. She mostly glares at us from the safety of her cat tree. Honey is really curious about Flavie – oh, and she loves Flavia’s food. That probably hasn’t endeared the dog to Flavie…
Monday I went to the International School to officially open the school year. I thought I was just going to say hi to the teachers and staff, but when I got there, they were all in the auditorium and the podium and microphone were set up! Granted, it’s a small school and there were only about 75 people in the audience but I was still surprised. Luckily I had rehearsed some talking points on the drive out, and my old Toastmasters kicked in, so it was all fine (and short)! The school is lovely and everyone is really friendly.
Tuesday night we went out for a nice steak dinner and to celebrate getting handshakes for Guadalajara. Now we have to get over the Spanish hurdle. We are cramming for a phone test in September – hopefully that will allow us to finalize the deal so we can start getting excited!
Friday was a nice dinner party at a local restaurant to celebrate Howie’s birthday – lots of fun and a nice group of folks who we don’t normally see. Dinner was interrupted by a flurry of “emergency visa” emails about a VIP, but luckily it all got settled pretty quickly and I could get back to the party.
This week we watched the latest episode of “Breaking Bad” and finished Season One of “The Hour” – thanks to Christy, we are now on Season Two. Lots of fun.
On the wildlife front, this week was interesting. I didn’t see the goats, but the local staff supervisor came one morning to tell me he needed to enter a maintenance work order for the “died buffalo” in the creek. I had to go out to see what that was all about. Sure enough, a dead water buffalo was stuck in some trash and foliage in the creek outside the Consular section – emitting a putrid smell, as you can imagine. While we were out looking at this lovely site, we saw a huge turtle (about 1.5 feet across the back of his shell) swimming in the creek. I assume he was a snapping turtle given the length of his neck and the shape of his head.
I was skeptical that the city would do anything about the died buffalo, but sure enough, they sent a crew out. Not to remove it entirely from the creek, but to give it a shove to keep floating downstream. At least it’s out of our smelling range now. Wonder who’s downstream?