This is hard...

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It's beautiful and I love it here, but the whole "speaking spanish thing" is really hard!

Yesterday I woke up and walked over to my bathroom to grab a shower. Unfortunately, the water never got warm. I don't mind a cold shower when I'm in 85+ degree weather, but it's only around 60 degrees here and the only heat in my house is from the fireplace that I haven't lit yet. I finished getting ready, ate some cereal, and walked up to the main office where I pretty much sat all day looking at scientific papers and social networking.

I left at one point to go look for salamanders. As I was walking down the path, I ran into one of Erik Lindquist's friends, Adolfo. After five minutes of trying to get across to him that I knew Erik, I think I may have been successful. From there, I continued down the path and veered off onto a new path that I haven't followed before. As I neared the end of it, I realized that it was someone's house, so I turned around. No sooner did I turn my heels, when I heard a dog bark and feel teeth graze my "posterior". Fortunately, it didn't bite hard or break skin, and I just walked away from it saying "hola perro" over and over again until it lost interest. The girls in the office laughed when I told them what happened, especially as I tried to get the word "fluffy" across to them. Apparently that dog is name Conde, after the "count" Dracula orchid that Finca Dracula specializes in. The girls also told me it was only a play bite, which I figured since it didn't actually hurt me.

At some point in there I had ramen for lunch, and then after all of this I had a can of green beans for supper. I'm trying to make that $200 meal budget go as far as possible. When I told my mom this she said, "here comes the weight loss." It's okay, though- I pigged out for the last couple of weeks at home, knowing that I'd probably lose weight while I was here.

Yolanes, the other intern here communicated to me that in the evenings she would like to help me with my spanish. So, when I finished eating, we went down to my house, attempted to turn on the hot water heater to no avail, and then proceeded to try to learn some spanish. It is very difficult to learn spanish from a person who doesn't speak english. I'm hoping all of the words she was teaching me are actually what I think they are! After the lesson, we walked back up to the main office and asked Erik, a guy who has some job here, to help with the hot water situation. He came down and got it to work, then left. I went upstairs to see if the shower would be hot and it still wasn't. Also, all of the electricity in my house started being really weird. A few lights stopped working, or they would go back and forth between being really bright or really dim. I tried to make cheesy chips for a snack but the microwave took over 5 minutes to even start to melt the cheese. The light in the microwave was flickering too. By the time I went to bed, only two lights in my whole house were even working, and my laptop stopped charging from the outlet. Woo hoo! Now it's really an adventure😊

Now, today, I need to find a way to communicate the problem to someone in spanish... Wish me luck!

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Comments

[Grandma Linn]

Oh my Emily
I love reading your blogs. This is great. Just remember this when you've been there for several months and how you will grow with the situation. No real dog bites, please. I certainly hope your electric problems are fixed by now. I love you, Emily Your Grandma