Inundación en Benimaclet: A Night to Add to the Books

23 of January 2011.

These came in handy. I was very grateful.

“Whoever has the sala (hallway) this week really lucked out.”

- Nora

3:30 AM Wake up Call. I woke up to our Doorbell ringing incessantly. Low and behold, it was our neighbor Pepita, complaining about water falling from her ceiling! It was impossible to ignore the 1.5 inches of water that had entered my room (and the apartment, in its entirety) within only a few hours of rest.

Our Landlord was unreachable.
 Translation: "Paco, the apartment is flooded. The police were here. Call us!!!!!"

Ah, reminiscing. 1^st Shock. Followed (almost immediately) by unremitting Laughter.

One hour later – this is after the Police left, exhausting virtually all of our towels, extra bed sheets and energy to clean up the unanticipated  – the team is still going at it. Amidst it all, Chelsea feels it is a good idea to play Shakira’s Loca. The memory of all four of us commiserating/working while listening to the Colombian Bombshell remains engraved in my memory. Why? We’ll never know. We finally finished around 5 AM-ish.

If you want to read a really great report, however, take a gander at Chelsea’s Blog immediately after skimming through this one. FABULOUS DOCUMENTATION and extremely comical.

 

Now - Let’s ID some positivity here, despite the fact that this may have been our biggest obstacle yet at the apartment (that is, aside from the finicky electricity, the rather impulsive doorbell we have unfortunately been endowed, the highly fragile state of our walls and glass living room door, and the very much relevant faucet issue we have had for months).

1. This Experience has brought the four of us closer. An innovative team building exercise, I think!
2. We got some exercise.
3. I finally met the infamous 90-year old neighbor the girls speak of – Oh, Pepita. (I’ll spare you)
4. I got a MUCH NEEDED laugh out of the whole situation. Laughing is almost always the best cure.

I needed to distract myself a bit, as you can imagine; so, I played a clip featuring one of my favorite (who I believe to be) revolutionaries: Taylor Mali.