June 19:

The day started with a headache and ended (well, at 5pm) without ice cream. It was a tragedy, really. Haha. No I'm a little bummed out because Joanie left this morning. And I missed her leaving because I was lying in bed, holding my head and trying to get some more sleep (unsuccessfully) and didn't realize she was going to leave so early! But her flight got cancelled so she had a worse day than I did, lol. Anyway, so she's gone and the house is super quiet. My clothes got drenched in a thunderstorm that came out of nowhere and the tiendas are closed because of it. So that means I'm out of bottled water and, more importantly, the ice cream I was going to reward myself with for getting through the day.

But I actually feel pretty good about the day. Work was frustrating, trying to work with the loans officer, Maritza (the woman I will be bugging for the next month or two to get lots of information about the outstanding loans and records from the past), in Spanish to get application forms written and designed relatively nicely. But once I got them finished at the end of the day, I think they look pretty good. I did most of it after Maritza left so I'll have to show it to her tomorrow...fingers crossed that she thinks they're as nice as I do! It was frustrating but that much more rewarding when I would format something and she would nod enthusiastically that I either understood her or got the point of that section. Woot. I still haven't gone through the entire microcredit manual/regulations document. My translating has not been the quickest. I'll likely be doing that again all day tomorrow and then tackle some more of it on the weekend. I don't mind that it's taking so long, really, because it's giving me time to really learn the vocabulary, spend time around people in the office while working with Arnulfo everyday on my Spanish. I wouldn't be ready to get hardcore into the researching stuff that I'm going to be doing because I just don't have the vocabulary and ability to communicate quickly enough yet.

Anyway, Spanish lesson was great today. Instead of reading out of a storybook that we've been using, Joanie picked up a newspaper for me yesterday, so we read that instead. Much more interesting to read about Latin American Idol (the winner last year was Guatemalan and apparently he's really good) and Obama being 6 percent points ahead of McCain.

Yesterday night was nice. I got to see the puppies (they are ridiculously adorable in a rat-like kind of way...). Oh, and now there are 8! Apparently there are a lot of people who want the puppies, so Annie should be able to get rid of them all. Woot! Played one round of Uno with a couple of boys, Jean Claude and Annie. Then I came home and, after Arnulfo cancelled our English studying session, watched V for Vendetta with Spanish subtitles (um, yeah, very educational...). Pumped to watch the Good Shepherd, which Joanie left with me! Love that movie.

The weekend's looking promising, assuming the electricity is working in Santa Elena on Saturday. I'm planning on being on the internet all day, buying lots of groceries and hopefully getting some new movies. Maybe scoping out the scene in Flores to see if it looks like there are Canadian tourists who are partying next weekend... Sunday is Spanish day! Now that the sound works on my computer, I'm planning on doing a lot of the instructional DVD stuff. I'm hoping I can finally sleep and rest this weekend so my studying is effective.

Have a week and a half until I start the moving process. Joanie decorated a lot so I have a bunch of cool stuff I can bring with me. I have a mirror now, which was strange. I have a lot of freckles, haha. I also have like 4 mosquito nets or something, so if you come to visit, you don't have to bring one! I'm so lucky Joanie and Annie were both here already and are both leaving me stuff. They had to have a lot of work done on their houses and buy lots of stuff for their houses when they got here. The hardest thing I have to do is move furniture from Joanie's to Annie's and maybe get a fan.


June 21
Actually, the day (June 19) actually ended with a cockroach attack. I went into the kitchen around 10 to get water to allergy pills (stupid rainforest plants!!) while on the phone with Jeffrey. Well, there was a cockroach about the size of my middle finger (appropriately enough) on my counter! So I grabbed the Raid Cockroach and sprayed it. Well, instead of killing it as advertised on the container, it jumped at me! If I didn't jump backwards, it would have freaking landed on me. Poor Jeffrey had to listen to me shriek into the phone. Then it ran away.

I went back into bed, finished talking to Jeffrey and then started hearing a buzzing noise. I assumed it was a beetle and shone my flashlight in the direction of the noise. The freaking cockroach had come into my room and was trying to get into the mosquito net! It was flying all over it for about 20 minutes while I followed it with my flashlight (which didn't seem to bother it at all). This was particularly disturbing because it wouldn't have taken much for it to find the flap when it could crawl into my net. Needless to say, it took me hours to fall asleep after that. I managed to go through all of my text messages, rereading and deleting and texting people I figured would be awake.

So, needless to say, yesterday was cleaning day! I swept my house probably 4 times, dumped bleach-filled water on nearly every surface multiple times and mopped the kitchen. This morning, I swept twice more, bleached every surface in the kitchen and dining room and mopped the rest of the main area of the house.

Now I'm sitting on a beautiful covered patio at Maya Internacional Hotel in Santa Elena. It was totally empty from 10:15 until 12:45. Now it's completely full! There's wireless internet that's fast, a pool, a view of (and breeze from!) the lake, clean water and food! And clean, bug-free bathrooms with flush toilets. The luxury! There are also pretty sweet patio chairs out in the sun.

I've gotten through a lot of emails, posted my pictures and talked to Jeffrey on Skype. Now, lunch and then I'll be doing some research for my thesis!