Month two out the window

Now we are entering November.  I think I will go back and tell of some of the different things we have encountered.  In one of the first posts we talked about the hot water heater.  We couldn't seem to get hot water all the time, and it turns out the machine was broken.  This hot water heater is not like the tank kind we usually have in the U.S.  This is a machine that heats the water up when you turn on the faucet.  It was a relief to have the technician look at it and say it was broken because we were wondering if our expectations were just too high or we just couldn't figure the machine out.  Well, now it is fixed, and I've not had a cold shower since.  The same machine is also the heater for the whole house.  We have several radiators throughout the house, and when we turn a knob on the water heater, it gets nice and warm in here.  Unfortunately the thermostat does not work, so I guess we need to adjust the temperature with the knob.  Because it has been sunny the last few weeks, I have only had the heat on overnight.  It's sunny, yet in the 50's, but the house seems to stay comfortable most of the day.  I think that the house is well insulated, but we have had some trouble with mold in some of the corners.  I guess it is from condensation forming.  Now I try to open a window in the areas that we had the trouble, and we will try to keep it dry there.

It is nice that it has been sunny.  There was a lot of rain for a week or more, and it's hard to get clothes dry in that kind of weather, but if you put things on the radiators, that can speed up the process.  The weather really seemed to change quickly. In the middle of September there were 95+ degree days, then in Ocober it hardly got out of the 50's, but I can handle it if the sun is shining.  The leaves are changing and falling.

Maybe the strangest and most uncomfortable thing that has happened so far involves a frozen chicken.  I have bought 3 whole chickens from the supermarket here.  The third one contained a surprise, or else I just missed it the first two times.  One day I planned to roast a chicken with some vegetables, but I didn't take the chicken out of the freezer as early as I should have.  When I went to cook it, it was still frozen in the middle.  I unwrapped it, and I was going to cook it anyway, but there seemed to be a chicken foot sticking out of one of the cavities.  I couldn't get it or any of the other parts out because it was frozen.  I put it in the oven, anyway, then transferred it to a pot on the stove to speed up the process.  Dinner was going to be late, but finally the chicken was done.  I was able to remove the foot and the other parts.  We took a picture, and Sam will post it later.  It didn't look like a healthy chicken foot, and there was only one, although people here say they like to eat chicken feet, and it's common for both feet to be in the package.  This incident did upset one of the kids, and after I reinvented the dish as gnocchi soup, this poor child ended up with a chicken claw in his bowl of soup.