CATACLYSM
Yesterday, things really perked up. At the lab I did a tiny amount of work and a huge amount of reading about leprosy and leishmaniasis via AccessMedicine and all its friends. It was pleasant reading, but just being on those sites made it feel like I was supposed to be writing a CBL report. I felt a little twitchy.
Early in the afternoon, someone from the lab volunteered to take us to the mall to buy prepaid cell phones so that we could live like normal people (incidentally, Dad, my actual cell phone doesn~t work at all here. Thank you, Verizon Customer Service). On the way home, she took a detour to drive along the beach and show us all the fun places to go in our neighborhood. We appreciated that immensely because we live sandwiched between the beach (which we hadn~t visited) and a highway crammed with malls, hotels, and fast food chains (not really fun). We were home ridiculously early, around 3pm, so we finally went for a walk on the beach.
Guys, we live in a postcard.
Actual view from the beach by our apartment:
I want to find and take surfing lessons. We also discussed finding a samba class. It~s strange making long-term plans, knowing that we~ll be here the entire summer instead of just five or ten days.
So yesterday was splendid until we got home from the beach and tried to cook dinner.
Ever since we got here, I have been doubting the wisdom of manufacturing a gas stove with a flat sheet of glass on top of it. We heated up some leftovers a couple nights ago, and it took forever because the glass stopped most of the heat from getting to the pot. It also made the stove difficult to light because the long matches we bought tended to snuff out before getting to the burner, however, that was what a guy showed us to do and I figured I would improve with practice.
So we had two pots going on the stove, and when I moved one to a back burner to make some room, the glass surface... as a certain smugfaced author would say: "exploded" isn~t the right word, but it~s the first one that comes to mind. Let me first reassure you that the glass went straight out and nowhere near our faces, thank god, which is a blessing we have been dwelling on ever since. But extremely hot glass did shoot out in every direction, coating the floor of most of the apartment, all over the table, the sink, the floor of our bathroom, the living room, and the bedroom. A piece of metal that was attached to the glass like a bumper at the front of the stove scraped my leg on the way down, and I jumped back over piles of glass to get away. We stood there in shock for a couple of seconds, not knowing what to say or do. I kept thinking how when I was a kid we had a book of games that encouraged us to fry marbles to watch them crack, and how I always thought that sounded incredibly dangerous, and now I had essentially fried the world~s biggest marble. Finally poor Pooja, having agreed only hours before to learn how to mix my factor in case anything happens to me, looks down and sees the blood running down my shin and pooling under my foot. I talked her down from infusing me--I was scraped, not lacerated--and tried to assess the damage, but there was so much blood and glass that it took us a while to figure out how extensive the cuts were and whether my foot was cut too. I turned out to have only three scrapes on my leg, each a couple inches long but so very shallow that I can~t believe they bled as much as they did. I washed my leg in the shower and put a lattice of bandaids over it, and it was totally fine. End of leg story.
Not totally fine was the long, arduous process of cleaning the glass up. It took hours, partly because glass covered almost every surface and partly because we were sweeping with what is essentially a toy witches' broom. Never before have I seen so much glass. We swept and swept and swept and wiped and wiped and wiped, burning through most of our paper towel stash and every plastic grocery bag we had. Incidentally, we swept up a lot of dead ants, increasing our admiration for Raid~s fine line of products. I must say, we did an excellent job of cleaning up.
You are no doubt wondering why our stove exploded. A forensic investigation revealed that while the glass surface appeared to be fixed in place--I had idly tried to slide it off when we first moved in--it was in fact a hinged cover that you lift up before you cook. I~ve never seen that before, and I don~t see that it has much of a point. When it initially didn~t move, and the guy lit the stove with it down, I assumed it was the sort of heatproof glass that they use on electric stoves. Obviously this was my fault, but I can~t decide if I~m an idiot or not. I strongly suspect that I am, and I have a hunch that Dad and DJ will back me up on this one.
At the end of it, we were despondent, not to mention starving. Also, our toilet had clogged again. We abandoned the apartment and went out for gross fast food.
We are going to live on gross fast food here. It costs as much as it does in the US, but it tastes much worse. You should have seen what we ate for lunch today.
I did not look forward to explaining the situation to recepçao, but they took it well. I explained what happened and why, that the stove was still fully usable, that we had cleaned it up, and that we were sorry. We went home and I unclogged the toilet.
So now, I know how to control the toilet and there~s nothing left on the stove to break. Tonight we will try to make pasta again, minus the vegetables that died in the glass storm, and I think it will go well.
Today we went to the lab and were sent home an hour and a half later. Dr. Jeromino is in Mosorro today and tomorrow, and our only instructions for today were to learn PCR. The techs first explained the concept, then explained that they didn~t have any actual PCR to do this week so we wouldn~t be practicing today. We asked what to do with the rest of the day, and they suggested the beach. So we walked toward home, unable to cross to the other side of the highway to catch a bus. Of course I forgot to put my sunblock back into my purse (we dumped them out last night, frantically thinking we~d lost our keys), and now I am burned. I don~t know how badly, but it~s probably not awful. Probably not as bad as Blaise had it last week, but then, so far Brazil is the land of things going much, much worse than expected.
When we leave this air-conditioned internet cafe at the mall, I will go home and curl up with Rosetta Stone. We will go to the beach at four when the sun is barely above the horizon and float around in the warm, warm water. We will make spaghetti and watch Gossip Girl (xoxo!)
Early in the afternoon, someone from the lab volunteered to take us to the mall to buy prepaid cell phones so that we could live like normal people (incidentally, Dad, my actual cell phone doesn~t work at all here. Thank you, Verizon Customer Service). On the way home, she took a detour to drive along the beach and show us all the fun places to go in our neighborhood. We appreciated that immensely because we live sandwiched between the beach (which we hadn~t visited) and a highway crammed with malls, hotels, and fast food chains (not really fun). We were home ridiculously early, around 3pm, so we finally went for a walk on the beach.
Guys, we live in a postcard.
Actual view from the beach by our apartment:
I want to find and take surfing lessons. We also discussed finding a samba class. It~s strange making long-term plans, knowing that we~ll be here the entire summer instead of just five or ten days.
So yesterday was splendid until we got home from the beach and tried to cook dinner.
Ever since we got here, I have been doubting the wisdom of manufacturing a gas stove with a flat sheet of glass on top of it. We heated up some leftovers a couple nights ago, and it took forever because the glass stopped most of the heat from getting to the pot. It also made the stove difficult to light because the long matches we bought tended to snuff out before getting to the burner, however, that was what a guy showed us to do and I figured I would improve with practice.
So we had two pots going on the stove, and when I moved one to a back burner to make some room, the glass surface... as a certain smugfaced author would say: "exploded" isn~t the right word, but it~s the first one that comes to mind. Let me first reassure you that the glass went straight out and nowhere near our faces, thank god, which is a blessing we have been dwelling on ever since. But extremely hot glass did shoot out in every direction, coating the floor of most of the apartment, all over the table, the sink, the floor of our bathroom, the living room, and the bedroom. A piece of metal that was attached to the glass like a bumper at the front of the stove scraped my leg on the way down, and I jumped back over piles of glass to get away. We stood there in shock for a couple of seconds, not knowing what to say or do. I kept thinking how when I was a kid we had a book of games that encouraged us to fry marbles to watch them crack, and how I always thought that sounded incredibly dangerous, and now I had essentially fried the world~s biggest marble. Finally poor Pooja, having agreed only hours before to learn how to mix my factor in case anything happens to me, looks down and sees the blood running down my shin and pooling under my foot. I talked her down from infusing me--I was scraped, not lacerated--and tried to assess the damage, but there was so much blood and glass that it took us a while to figure out how extensive the cuts were and whether my foot was cut too. I turned out to have only three scrapes on my leg, each a couple inches long but so very shallow that I can~t believe they bled as much as they did. I washed my leg in the shower and put a lattice of bandaids over it, and it was totally fine. End of leg story.
Not totally fine was the long, arduous process of cleaning the glass up. It took hours, partly because glass covered almost every surface and partly because we were sweeping with what is essentially a toy witches' broom. Never before have I seen so much glass. We swept and swept and swept and wiped and wiped and wiped, burning through most of our paper towel stash and every plastic grocery bag we had. Incidentally, we swept up a lot of dead ants, increasing our admiration for Raid~s fine line of products. I must say, we did an excellent job of cleaning up.
You are no doubt wondering why our stove exploded. A forensic investigation revealed that while the glass surface appeared to be fixed in place--I had idly tried to slide it off when we first moved in--it was in fact a hinged cover that you lift up before you cook. I~ve never seen that before, and I don~t see that it has much of a point. When it initially didn~t move, and the guy lit the stove with it down, I assumed it was the sort of heatproof glass that they use on electric stoves. Obviously this was my fault, but I can~t decide if I~m an idiot or not. I strongly suspect that I am, and I have a hunch that Dad and DJ will back me up on this one.
At the end of it, we were despondent, not to mention starving. Also, our toilet had clogged again. We abandoned the apartment and went out for gross fast food.
We are going to live on gross fast food here. It costs as much as it does in the US, but it tastes much worse. You should have seen what we ate for lunch today.
I did not look forward to explaining the situation to recepçao, but they took it well. I explained what happened and why, that the stove was still fully usable, that we had cleaned it up, and that we were sorry. We went home and I unclogged the toilet.
So now, I know how to control the toilet and there~s nothing left on the stove to break. Tonight we will try to make pasta again, minus the vegetables that died in the glass storm, and I think it will go well.
Today we went to the lab and were sent home an hour and a half later. Dr. Jeromino is in Mosorro today and tomorrow, and our only instructions for today were to learn PCR. The techs first explained the concept, then explained that they didn~t have any actual PCR to do this week so we wouldn~t be practicing today. We asked what to do with the rest of the day, and they suggested the beach. So we walked toward home, unable to cross to the other side of the highway to catch a bus. Of course I forgot to put my sunblock back into my purse (we dumped them out last night, frantically thinking we~d lost our keys), and now I am burned. I don~t know how badly, but it~s probably not awful. Probably not as bad as Blaise had it last week, but then, so far Brazil is the land of things going much, much worse than expected.
When we leave this air-conditioned internet cafe at the mall, I will go home and curl up with Rosetta Stone. We will go to the beach at four when the sun is barely above the horizon and float around in the warm, warm water. We will make spaghetti and watch Gossip Girl (xoxo!)