Neat Apartments/City Holiday/More Stomach Bug

Aug. 14
Beth and I went to another new faculty member's apartment for happy hour socializing. There was another 10 members of staff in attendance as well, along with some new faces who are friends with host's roommate. Aside from the fun of snacking and socializing, this apartment was totally chic (and that word's not part of my vernacular, but it does best describe it)---ultra modern, with great art and furniture from around the world everywhere (both the roommates have done a lot of traveling and living abroad). The really neat thing is that the building is built into a hill, so when we came in to the lobby, we were actually on the 9th floor and had to go down to get to his place. It was really foggy out when we were there, so I couldn't get a great view, but his balcony apparently looked out onto this beautiful forested ravine, with no other buildings in site. It was definitely the nicest apartment we've ever been in.

Aug. 15
Today was some city holiday, so everyone at school had the day off. It was great sleeping in (though we were still up early enough for our free breakfast downstairs) and taking our time. In the afternoon, we cabbed it over to Kelly's place, along with our other awesome friend, Charlotte (she's Canadian, just finished teaching in Kuwait, has great stories, and is a lot of fun). We all lounged around and ate popcorn while watching Garden State and getting up periodically to check out the volcanoes when the clouds would open up to reveal them.

After that, we went over to Jennifer's apartment (Jennifer is Beth's direct cohort at school) to have dinner with her. This was another amazing place. Jennifer's been living abroad and traveling for many years, and she has amassed a lot of beautiful and interesting ceramics, weavings, paintings, furniture, etc. We had fun slowly going through her place and hearing about all the stories each of these mementos held. Her apartment also had a direct view of the volcanoes, and they never get old to look at.

For dinner, she made us a tasty salad, rice with stir-fried veggies, and salmon. For dessert, we had chocolate-dipped apples and plums. Yum! It was great hanging out and chatting with Jennifer and a fun way to top off the unexpected holiday (I still don't even know what the day's significance was!).

Tengo delor en mi estómago (My stomach hurts)
Well, as I mentioned earlier, I was having stomach troubles. It seemed to get better, but has since come back to fight round 2. Beth left this morning saying she wasn't feeling well either. I've been taking daily pills to get better, so hopefully those will begin working soon... We'll keep you posted on this exciting development.

Last, sorry if you haven't been able to access our Flickr pictures. I'm trying to get that fixed this morning, so keep trying.