shall I proceed?

This is our building. We're in the middle on the right... yes, the balcony goes all the way to the back wall.

I woke up at 1pm on Tuesday, May 3. CRAP! I wanted to get so much accomplished and now it's basically blown. At least I can still go to the mall (the one with the grocery store, casino and gym in it) and buy our bus passes. Provided, of course, that I can figure out how to ask for them. This is the point where I get out the phone and call Rob and ask him how to say it and where to go and get confused and then wind up having him text me the question I am supposed to ask. I went to the wrong stand first... he said it was a stand outside the grocery store (Emisfero, more like Walmart, really) and I went to one outside Emisfero and found that it was a card/flower/knick knack stand, but not the one selling bus passes. The lady (who spoke zero English) was very nice to me though and pointed me in the right direction. So I go to the lotto counter and say "vondrei due boletos di multiviaggio per favore" and naturally, the guy answers me in English. Go figure, right? He helped me with my pronunciation, I thanked him and we moved on. There was some indecision on whether or not we should just grab the bus and go up to Ederle or not, we start walking away from the bus stop, then we wind up getting on after all. I did not do the bus passes right the first time we rode the bus, but I didn't get in trouble for it, so I'm chalking it up to one of my mom's favorite statements that God watches out for small children and fools... since we had both options covered on this trip, apparently He was watching out for us. The other thing I didn't do right (both because I didn't know how) was hit the button to stop the bus. Thankfully, we shared the bus with a couple of soldiers who needed the same stop. We made it through the gate and caught up with Rob, who showed us a couple more places we needed to know about - unfortunately, I'm still tired and not really absorbing all this information. Then we headed to the post office to check our mailbox which he has so far not been able to open. I have to use the ladder because the silly thing is right up against the ceiling, but after two tries with the combination I manage to get it open and find that we have packages waiting for us. Not surprisingly, they're the ones I sent from Ponte Vedra - it apparently takes about 6 days for us to receive packages, so SEND AWAY!! Peanut butter is definitely welcome (Meghan, laugh it up... I know I would!). I get the notices from the box and look to see what time it is... no luck for today - the actual post office is closed. So we move on to the Ederle Inn where our luggage awaits us. It took about 90 seconds for us to get the luggage... this is a very common problem apparently. I was thoroughly amused by the size of the designated luggage room (easily the size of the master in Texas) and by how full it was (kinda hard to navigate the paths between bags) but happy that this is common enough for it to not be a complete hassle to get our stuff back. The bags were just a bit heavier than I remembered. We were absolutely gonna walk them all the way out to the front gate where we had already determined I was taking a cab home. Luckily, there was a bus available for us to take. Super-fast-paced Rob was agitated by the driver's relaxed way of doing things... I hope he gets used to it because if not, it will be a long three years for him here! We head out and snag the cab back to the house and luckily, I only have to carry the bags up the stairs. I gave the lightest one to Felix and it took him 20 minutes to bring up. I had the other two up and mostly unpacked by the time he got to the door. Poor kid!

The good (?) news here is that we were very tired at this point, so getting home was excellent and getting showered was even better and going to bed was the BEST. Especially knowing that the alarm was set for ridiculously early and the new day promised to be just as busy as the last few.