We have now been living in our house here in Mexico for about 5 months. One little odd thing about the house is how some of the doors lock, especially upstairs. They tend to lock from the side that would make little sense. One such room is the upstairs balcony/sunroom (pictured below). This is a wonderful room, but the door locks from the inside, not the outside. No doubt this is due to Mexican security issues, but it can lead to some problems. With that being said, it has never been a problem until this week and until Joelle decided to make it a problem.
On Wednesday, I stayed home from school with a sprained ankle. At the end of the day, I was sitting in the sunroom when Joy and the kids came home. We sat up there for a while and talked. Joy, gave me the ankle brace the school was so nice to loan me. As we sat there talking, Joelle came running in and BAM, slammed the door behind her on the way. Somehow she had also turned the lock and there it was, we were locked in.
One really nice feature of the room is that all of the windows slide all the way open to really make it an open air room. After we realized we were locked in, we opened all the windows and tried to yell out to our next door neighbor. Regretfully for us, only one neighbor looked to be home and they weren't answering our calls for help. Luckily, I had my computer in the room recording some verses so we decided to log on to facebook and make a plea for help. Luckily, one of the other teachers was on, and came over. After about an hour of "good family time" we were rescued. We thought we learned our lesson!
We had not! Yesterday, I was home with the kids as it was an off day for students. The kids were playing up stairs and I was reading down stairs. I told the kids to get their shoes as we had to the grocery store. When I said this, David came down with a worried/guilty look on his face. Here is how the conversation went. "Joelle, locked herself upstairs". "What do you mean Joelle is locked upstairs?" "She ran into your room and locked the door". "Well tell her to unlock it." "She can't, she also locked herself on the balcony." "WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE LOCKED HERSELF ON THE BALCONY!".
I was hot. I went up stairs and sure enough, my room was locked and then looking out the small balcony I could see the top of Joelle's head through the glass and hear her crying. I convinced her to calm down and then tried to get her to unlatch the windows. She got the first 3, but the fourth latch was stuck and she couldn't get it. I tried to climb onto the small roof to help, but all I could do was encourage her. I climbed back onto the balcony and tried to think of other ideas.
I first thought, I could unscrew the door knob. Problem, my screwdrivers were all in the laundry room which can only be accessed through our bedroom. That idea was shot! I then thought, I will call Joy at school and ask her to come home with a screwdriver. Problem, my phone was in the pocket of my jeans on the floor of our bedroom. I sat there flustered. I got a little frustrated with David. (I didn't mention that the reason Joelle had locked herself in was because David had stolen the Mexican Flag she made at school and wouldn't give it back. She finally got it and ran into our room quickly to protect it from him.) I told David to go search all the drawers downstairs for a screwdriver while I tried to think of other ideas. David a little while later came to the rescue. He found a tiny toy screwdriver that came with a pack of batteries we bought. It took me a while to unscrew the door knob, but we got it and Joelle was rescued. If I didn't already say, the kids are now banned from the balcony!
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