Why Everyone Should Have a Rosa

In case you didn't already know, Rosa is the sweet woman who comes to clean our apartment every Wednesday, and I love her.  Not only does she do the obvious, like clean and iron, but she is consistently making other little improvements around the apartment and providing ways for us to be more tidy and organized; she's kind of like MacGyver, but older and Colombian.  For example:

• That pesky kitchen drawer that continually slid open for weeks on end?  She taped some cardboard to either side, so now its stays shut, no problem.
• The heap of shoes we had in the laundry room?  Why, she fashioned a shoe cubby from an overturned plastic shipping bin we had lying around.
• What to do with the collection of pens, pencils and markers that David brings home in his pockets everyday...Hmmm.  Well I suppose, if you are Rosa you would take the box from a hard drive that we haven't thrown away yet, put it on its side, and turn it into a pencil holder.  Genius.
• Vase for your birthday flowers?  Cut up a Gatorade bottle.  I actually came home and thought she brought us a vase, until upon closer inspection I realized it was in fact a Gatorade bottle.
• Frozen plastic containers full of water for watering plants without flooding them. 

These are just a few of the genius ideas she has come up with in our apartment.  If Rosa had a blog, I would be pinning her ideas to my "Good to Know" board like crazy.  And you all would be re-pinning them.  (Social media overload?  Possibly.) 

In addition to all her handy fix-ups, I think Rosa may also have special powers.  Every once in a while Every other day, our lock on our apartment gets all jammed so that we have to use the key to unlock the lock while the door is already open so that we can close it.  Sounds confusing, and its a pain in the arse.  However, it never fails that whenever Rosa as come for the day, it is magically fixed when we get home.  I have yet to figure out how she does it and I know if we mess up the lock, it won't be fixed until the next Wednesday.

In summary, we (and our apartment) would be a mess without Rosa in our lives.  She is just another one of the many characters in our Colombian lives that has made our year abroad so much easier and enjoyable.