Gracias, Sesame Street

Drama all around chez la princesse. I came home to a not-so-pleasant note from my apartment management company last night. I decided I would head down there first thing this morning to deal with it. The sign on the door says they open at 8:30. I got there at 8:28. No one was there. I sat down, and started reading my book. After every chapter, I'd get up, try the door (always locked), and knock, in case they had snuck in some secret back let's avoid Genevieve way. Then I would call.

Finally, at 9:15, I gave up, ran upstairs, wrote a strongly worded letter, actually using my "Esq" in the signature, copied it on my fax machine (it was handwritten as my home printer is broken), and dropped it into the rent drop box. I decided then to see if I could find any of the maintenance people to tell me why the office wasn't open.

I found someone cleaning in the laundry room. I started talking to her, when she interrupted me and said, "English. Leetle" and made that universal sign for little with her fingers. I thought. My Spanish is, well, less than little, but then I had a genius brainstorm. I remembered how to say open! And closed! So I said, "Officina? Aberto?" She said, "Si!" I then lost all ability to speak Spanish, and started saying in English, "But no one is there!" when she just indicated I should follow her and she took me into the office with her magic key, where we determined that indeed, no one was there.

So thanks to Sesame Street's Spanish lesson, I was able to at least determine there was no one in the office. Does anyone else remember the little cartoon where they taught you Aberto/Cerrado? See! You can learn things from television.