Spanish small talk...

I made the mistake of asking our cleaning lady where she's been since I haven't seen her in about a month and whether she was on holiday. What I thought was small talk turned into a twenty minute conversation. She was clearly not on holiday. In fact she had to fly back home (Chile) because her father was having open heart surgery (corazon abierto), which took 8 hours. Her trip consisted of only that. gracias y adios, she repeated. That's all she did. She explained that the weather in Chile was hot but not too hot and her and her brother had no place to sleep except on the floor (suelo). I thought the woman was going to start crying. I'm sure I missed bits and pieces of the story but what an emotional journey for this woman. Well now she's back to work and hope she's at ease. Mind you her dad is 87 years old. Not bad at all. Oh and this conversation was fully in Spanish. Yikes!