Death of a Transformer

In case you weren't aware, Paraguay doesn't run on the same electrical output as the US. All of it's outlets are made for 220 volts, or is it 110? I don't know . . . whichever the US isn't. We knew this back in July when we came and were prepared to buy a few transformers (not to be confused with converters which merely allow you to keep the same voltage, but change the layout of the plug itself so it fits into the socket in the wall). We brought one transformer with us and purchased two more once we arrived. One for the monitor in Bailey's room and another for the receiver in ours. The third we kept handy for other electronics like the camera battery charger and hair straightener. Until this past week, everything has gone on without a hitch.

Arriving back home, we discovered that the transformer we had bought in the states was no longer working. We're not sure why - it worked when we left - but none the less, it went ka-put and is out of commission. But no worries! We still have two and the monitor doesn't need to be plugged in 24/7.

One of the most exciting things we brought back with us to Paraguay after our extended Christmas vacation was a Crock-Pot (thanks, Allie!). Brandon took it on the plane as his carry on and rambled about hot wings incessantly. Shocking, I know. I, too, was excited about it, if only for the fact that we could use it instead of the oven for many meals and would save ourselves a sweltering apartment and/or the need to run the air conditioner every night.

Last Sunday, after a lunch of sandwiches, I decided to break it in. I loaded the pot with chicken, potatoes, onions, carrots, zucchini, and a "new" marinade recipe I found on-line. I grabbed our handy-dandy transformer and set that little Crock-Pot to work. A little while after, we began to smell something odd. Not scary odd, just different odd. Thinking it was the Crock-Pot, I headed to the kitchen to check it out, but all seemed well. The pot was crocking away and had actually begun to boil. I turned down the heat to low and chalked the smell up to it just being a new device (much like a heater smells the first time you use it).

After a much needed Sunday afternoon nap, the smell hadn't grown any stronger, there wasn't smoke oozing from the pot, and our dinner was smelling delicious. And then I noticed this:

The handle had melted! You can see where the plastic had dripped all the way down the length of the pot before I picked it off (once cool, mind you). And the inside of the pot has a faint black ring burnt into it:

Hummmm.

Dinner was delicious, but I'm leery to try again, lest a greater disaster occur. It'll be a huge bummer, though, if we only get one meal out of the whole ordeal of bringing it down!

And life went on . . .

With Bailey now eating pureed foods, I brought down a dozen or so pre-packaged cups of food (thanks, Gerber!) to get us through a few days until I could stock-pile homemade baby food for her. Our neighbors gave us their old blender and I set to work making sweet potatoes, carrots, and pears the day after the great Crock-Pot disaster. When pureeing the sweet potatoes, I again smelled something odd, but this time also saw smoke coming from the blender! Great, just great. I let it cool off for a while, added some liquid to the rather dense vegetable, and finished the blending without incident. It had to have just been the lack of liquid that made the smoke, right?

Wrong!

The next day as I attempted to puree some peaches, white potatoes and squash, the smoke began again, and I could see a faint light (fire?) glowing inside the base of the blender. Not good. I asked our neighbor (and former owner of the blender) if I had attached something wrong, and she affirmed that everything was in place correctly. But the smell was distinctively of smoke and she cautioned me against using it further. So I finished the "pureeing" with a potato masher and prayed that Bailey wouldn't mind the extra texture in her food.

And now? One of the maintenance men took the blender to a nearby shop to have the motor replaced. He said that it should be back either Monday or Tuesday (yesterday or today), or at least that's what I think he said, anyway. But if the repairs are successful, it will be much cheaper than having to buy a new blender, that's for sure!

So that was Tuesday.

Either Wednesday or Thursday night, I went to plug in the monitor receiver in our room (with the same transformer from the Crock-Pot) and the power light flickered on, then went off. The ac adaptor chord is a bit temperamental, so I jiggled the chord, hoping to see the light come back on, but it never did. So we went to bed without it, thankful that Bailey's been sleeping through the night for nearly 7 months and we don't have a huge need for the device that now sits idly by our bedside. Darn transformer!

Thursday rolls around and Bailey starts discovering how to open the cabinet doors on the bottom of the entertainment unit in our apartment. She started pulling out some of the random flyers from restaurants that we had stashed in there, and then proceeded to crawl inside the cabinet herself. Wanting to seize the Kodak moment, I grabbed the camera, only to see that the battery was completely dead; I couldn't even coax one last picture out of it. So I plugged it in, using the transformer used on the Crock-Pot - the one that didn't work on the baby monitor, and crossed my fingers that it would work . . . and it did! The charging light glowed a bright green until the battery was fully charged. Talk about temperamental!

With the success of the transformer on the battery charger, I was hopeful that it would work on my straightening iron for Friday morning. Most days I'm not too particular about my hair, especially in the humidity, but I was subbing in first grade on Friday and wanted to look a bit more presentable. Plugging it in on Thursday night for a trial run, it worked fine, and seemed to be heating up on Friday morning, too, but then it went ka-put, like the monitor and Crock-Pot.

And somewhere along this timeline, the transformer refused to work on my breastpump, too. But thankfully it takes AA batteries and has worked well with them . . . sheesh!

And the culprit?

Who would have thought that a tiny little device would have such a huge impact on our lives?

We Made It!

Last Wednesday and Thursday, we made the trek from wintry Southern California (a.k.a. 80* weather and 0% humidity) to end-of-summer Asuncion, Paraguay (90* highs, 60-80% humidity, and not as much cooling off in the evenings as we're used to in Cali). It is good to be home, to unpack our things into our own space, and get back into a familiar routine. And we couldn't be happier to see all our South American friends!

God definitely went before us on the trip and made some elements of the trip much more enjoyable. On our first flight - 3 and a half hours from Ontario to Houston - we were blessed to have a row of three seats all to ourselves. We boarded the plane first, since traveling with an infant gets you priority seating, and spent the next 20 minutes or so just waiting for someone to come and fill the empty seat. But God saved it for us and we enjoyed the extra elbow room, and extra space for Bailey to play in when she awoke from her nap.

After the success we had with the extra seat on the short flight, Brandon approached the flight crew at the gate in Houston and asked if there was space on the 10 hour flight to Sao Paulo, Brazil, for us to do the same. And - PRASIE GOD - there was! We were seated in the last row of the place and were again able to spread out a bit. We were hopeful that Bailey would sleep in the empty seat (rather than in my arms), but that thought was short lived. She konked out for about an hour in the seat between Brandon and me, but then awoke with a start and wouldn't have anything to do with napping anywhere but in Mommy's arms. Oh joy. The flight was okay, but Bailey was restless and the turbulence kept us in our seats most of the time.

The worst flight of them all, though, was the short hop from Brazil to Asuncion (with a quick stop in Ciudad del Este). We were all antsy - Bailey more than usual - and I was exhausted. There was one point where I fell asleep sitting upright and Bailey started tumbling off the seat because I just wasn't alert any more. Thankfully, though, Brandon had gotten a bit of sleep on the plane and was coherent enough to catch her! After an hour of air time, we stopped in Ciudad del Este and again got to spread out into three seats for the 20 minute flight to Asuncion. And, yes, there were people who boarded the plane for the 20 minute segment of the journey. Really people? You're going to pay for a plane ticket when the trip is only 20 minutes? I don't get it.

But I digress . . .

Our luggage gave us a scare when we thought that five of our six bags were lost. One bag - the bag filled with volleyballs, cones, and other sports equipment for the school - was first on the baggage claim belt when we arrived in Asuncion. Expecting all our luggage to be in relatively the same spot on the plane, anxiety grew and grew as bags kept coming, none of them ours. Note to self: If one of your bags comes off the plane first, the others will be dead last.

As we exited immigration to start searching for our friends who came to pick us up, we were greeted by banners, mariachi music, and endless cheering. No, it wasn't for us. From what I could tell from the signs that the fanatic crowd was holding, there was a national soccer player arriving and shortly after we went through the doors, the screams became ear-piercing as he apparently made his grand entrance. I can still pretend all the ruckus was for us, right?

The apartment building was a sight for sore eyes, and I was further overjoyed when I quickly discovered that two of our neighbors (Mara and Belinda) took time to dust and clean the floors in the apartment before we arrived. THANK YOU!! After two months of being away, that was NOT a chore I was looking forward to. We were also greeted by a fabulous sign hanging in our kitchen/dining area:

Things are much the same as when we left, with a few notable exceptions. One, our friends Nate and Cassie decided to update the pictures on our computer with some of their own. This is our new desktop picture, and they also took 24 other pics of themselves in our apartment in various poses (some in each other's clothes) and set them as our new screen saver. I've left it all up . . . for now.

The second change (that I was super excited to make) was putting up new curtains in Bailey's room. Not only are these ones made by Grandma Fulbright (thanks, Mom!) they are also lined and help block out a lot of the afternoon sunlight that her room gets. The curtains that had been hanging were sheers that let in a lot of light, making afternoon napping more difficult than it needed to be. Now, her room glows a soft pink in the afternoons and stays much cooler! Yeah!

We were blessed by our time in California, but feel equally blessed to have returned safely home, to where God has called us to be.