Day nine

I spent much of today at my surrogate family’s house. They are as hospitable as it gets. Since I got here Yolanda has not let a day go by without feeding us in some form. It’s impossible to say no to her, so yesterday I devised a plan and escaped before lunch. Duke and I went to the shopping district to pick up some essentials from ¨El Encanto¨, the local department store. I have to say shopping is my least favorite part of this trip. For starters, I have to pay with local money that feels like playing monopoly, I also have to do all the conversions to dollars in my head to make sure I’m not overpaying for stuff, lastly I have to choose between speaking to Duke in English and have everyone stare at us or speak Spanish and have everyone stare at me anyway because our Spanish doesn’t sound local enough.

Anyway, it rained non-stop today and we had to camp out in the apartment. Luckily we had snacks and stuff to drink. The water here is really bad so my crystal light is useless until I buy water.

The school still hasn’t called me back about the job. It’s very likely that I won’t start until next week. With the general strike and riots on Monday, I’d rather lay low anyway. It was a little scary because a couple of people were killed, although not much happened in my neighborhood.

To answer the question posted by ¨anonymous¨ on my last post:

I do miss New York, this is an adventure for me… and like every other adventure, it must be temporary for it to keep its enjoyable qualities. I am not sick of being here yet, but should that happen, I have a couple of contingency plans lined up.