I feel like I’m inside a rain stick. Imagine there’s a torrential downpour outside, and the only roof that’s separating the rain from you is made of corrugated fiberglass and metal. It’s hard to hold a conversation or complex thought when it’s really coming down. I think it’s fun and exciting, but I’ve also only experienced a few hours of this.
Backing up. As I was finishing writing the last time, I noticed that whenever I touched any metal parts of a port on this computer, I would get a nasty shock (of voltage, not any other nasty shocks you might think of). It was plugged into the outlet, which I believe to be the source of the problem. Now I’m running on battery, and it’s being very pleasant, but I’m still curious what that was all about. Various theories running around are that the outlet isn’t grounded, it’s at some crazy voltage, or perhaps the humidity has something to do with it. Daniel installed everything himself, and he claims that it was all done right, and the humidity thing doesn’t have much of a basis. Also, it’s a brand new computer and cable, so any sort of malfunction there would be surprising. Think about it and let me know your ideas.
Alan’s birthday cake and ice cream was pretty much as expected. Who doesn’t like cake and ice cream? My body, for one, but I took some Lactaid and seem to have dealt with it. After everyone had finished eating, I sat and listened to the stories, picking up anywhere from 30-80% of the content, depending on who was speaking. The gap I couldn’t pick up made the stories extra interesting, since I would try and piece together random strings of words and phrases as quickly as I could. Even in the day I’ve been here, I feel I’ve been improving in this comprehension business.
When everyone finished talking, Ken and I went into “town” to visit the internet shop. The walk was about 15 minutes on dirt and stone (not cobblestone, but just stone) roads. At a particular point in the road, we came across this large “gated” community which housed one of the local internet stations. This community was obviously intending on having the protection of a gate from the beginning, but they decided to work toward that by building from the center out. Thus, it’s a pretty large community of homes surrounded by the sort of barbed wire fence you would erect to keep large, lazy animals inside. Anyone wanting to break in could easily use a pair of heavy duty wire cutters, a spare piece of carpet, or even just a carefully placed jump. It does, however, have the security advantage of a guard, whose primary focus I could tell was to open the door for people and cars. Granted, Ken and I weren’t exactly the kind of people a guard would find a threat, but it seemed like the money spent on hiring a guard might be better spent building the wall.
The internet shop, if you can call it that, was a small room in someone’s house that happened to have two computers with internet capabilities. An hour of internet would set you back $1 US, so make sure to budget accordingly. When I sarcastically mentioned to Ken that it was pretty steep, he reasoned with me that it costs more for them to get it out here, since we’re already pretty far from the city. Apparently he thought the price was pretty steep too, since other places only charge 50 cents per hour.
Since I’ve been writing these things on my computer and the technology there is still at the point where I saw a 3.5 inch floppy disk seriously being used, I wasn’t able to bring my own computer and use the internet there. Instead, I merely added a quick note to my mom at the bottom of Ken’s email and looked up potentially useful words in my dictionary. It’s not like I would have been any more productive elsewhere.
When Ken’s hour was up, we started walking back only to realize that it had begun to rain. Fortunately, it was only a light rain and actually even pleasant. Ken made a big deal about the fact that I brought a hat (since apparently nobody here wears them), so we both at least had dry heads.
By the time we got back to the house, the rain started alternating between heavy and light, always maintaining a soothing background noise. Not too long after that was dinner, which consisted of refried beans, rice, plantains, and papaya. I learned my lesson with the chilis, and this time only added a few drops of the liquid. It ended up being the perfect blend of seasoning and spice.
As soon as we cleaned up the table, it was time to set out chairs for a study. Several minutes later, we were sitting in them and being quiet.
I’m on a mission to force myself to improve my Spanish skills, so I requested no translator. It’s definitely much easier to understand the non-native speakers than the native ones. I’d say I could understand nearly 90% of what Alan said, but maybe 20-30% of what some of the sisters had to share. This is really helping with my patience and focus too.
It was interesting being in a meeting where one of the primary distractions, aside from the language barrier, is trying to keep large, unusual bugs off of you. I’m not sure if any of them are actually dangerous, but I’m trying to keep the attitude that whatever happens will be part of the adventure. I’m almost positive I’ll get food poisoning of some sort, but I dealt with that about once a week when I was in China. Anything worse than that — Malaria, Cholera, phantom uterus, etc. — it will at least make for a great story if I live through it.
Anyway, I’m going to get ready for bed now and try to stop thinking about that ridiculously large spider that just crawled under my bed (true story!).
