Yesterday was devoted to getting our household livable. In the morning I finished my email to our landlords requesting attention to various minor deficiencies. Then we spent the afternoon cleaning and managed to at least get the surface dirt gone. There's still some deep cleaning left to do before it’ll be as clean as we’d like. We finished cleaning at about 9pm and then went to Walmart (yes, Walmart) to do some shopping. Mostly we went because we didn’t have any towels and we both needed showers badly. Probably it was a mistake to take Enid out that late. She had a bit of a meltdown in the store when Robin refused to buy the towels she liked, opting for cheaper ones. A memorable moment was when she told Robin (between sobs) “if you won’t buy me the towels I want then I will want you to get sunscreen in your mouth!” Oh to be so innocent that the worse you can wish upon someone is that they get sunscreen in their mouth. She got over it after a while though and then had a wonderful time choosing out a nail polish color with Robin.

When we came out of the Walmart there was lighting flashing in the sky, and on the way home rain started coming down in torrents. The streets in our neighborhood were flooded with several inches of water. Enid fell asleep in the car and didn’t wake up when we carried her inside, even though there was thunder booming loudly every minute or so.

Today was my first day of work. I didn’t make it in until 10:30am, but I stayed until 8pm, so I guess that’s a respectable first day. José, Sean, Luiz and I are going to meet tomorrow at 11am to talk about research goals, but today I mostly just worked on helping Sean translate the Powerpoint slides for the class he’s teaching, and then I began reviewing for the two lectures I’m going to teach to cover for Sean while he’s away next week. The class is an introductory molecular genetics course for medical students and both lectures will be on transcription. Should be easy enough, but I want to be well prepared. I’ll probably spend most of my time over the next few days on that.

An unexpected treat at work was that they gave me an office. I was only expecting a cubicle. I don’t know if I’ll get to keep the office for the whole year I’m here, but it’s nice for now. A phone and computer are supposed to be installed tomorrow.

The good news when I got home was that the landlords responded to my email by sending their worker Ismael over today to take care of things. He fixed the water heater so that the pilot light stays lit and repaired the broken drawers on the dresser. He is going to come back tomorrow to fix torn screens and cracked glass in some of the windows and hang a new door on the laundry room. It was a very auspicious beginning to our relationship with our new landlords.