"Relaxing" at Home

We certainly weren't thinking clearly when we received the call about Uncle Nello and left the next day.  If we had been, we surely would have allowed more than a week upon our return to prepare for the move to our new apartment. Although we have some photos of the move, and of the kitchen disaster, and a few other things (all of which were posted on Facebook at various times) we still don't have
any photos of the "finished product," now that furniture is in place, etc. Hopefully soon.
Two weeks after our return, we're now "settled" in our new ninth floor condo in Magdalena del Mar, in Lima.  It has been a wild couple of weeks, starting with a Tuesday afternoon call from the moving company telling us that they would pack us up on Wednesday and move us on Thursday, rather than doing the whole thing on Wednesday as we had expected.
Then there was the internet connection. A few weeks before we had left, Gene had tried to do a contract with Movistar via their website. They never responded. He ended up going to their office 3 times after we got back, always being told that everything was set and the service people would be over to hook us up. Then when the installer people showed up they always had various reasons for telling us they couldn't hook us up. Some of the reasons were: (1) We're foreigners, and thus do not have a DNI (national id card), which is required, (2) We don't have enough last names and thus their computer cannot find us, (3) The computer has us living in the wrong district, (4) They cannot find us because our apartment number is on the wrong line on the service contract (this while standing at our apartment door). We eventually went with the other company and as of yesterday, we have internet, cable tv and a phone. It took 3 days.
And of course there was the kitchen crash. To return home and find most of your kitchen on the floor is enough to take your breath away. Apparently the brackets on which the open shelving had been installed were not securely attached. How fabulous that there are only two small chips in the granite countertop.
It goes without saying that every new building can be expected to have early plumbing issues. It seems that what happens is that the construction workers dump the plastic bags and other items left from the lunch, coffee, etc down the unfinished drain pipes. Within a month or so of the building completion, the sins of the workers become known to the new owners. If you're lucky, not like us, it won't all happen at midnight.
Naturally we all knew that we would have to endure the construction noise and dust from the building going up right next to us. Those of us on the side of our building that is next to the new building have balconies, so the construction certainly denies us some of the peacefulness we would like to enjoy on our balconies. What we hadn't counted on is the fact that the way their building is designed actually puts this end of their building directly in front of about half the width of our balconies, totally blocking our views. This became apparent at just about the time that this building was completed. The entire building now has a formal request in to the municipality to force the next-door builder to stop the construction. We will see what happens, but right now it is not looking good.
We will try to post some pictures soon. Although the furniture is arranged and everything is looking good, we're still doing some painting and other finishing touches, so haven't taken time to try to get good pictures. Soon, my friends ...