Rain, Rain, Go Away

OK, so I lied. I do have five new pictures on my camera since I last posted. Here they are! Last Friday, it started POURING around 2:15, as it was nearing time to leave school. It is ending the rainy season here, which means we have some serious downpours. Friday was definitely one of those. It doesn't usually rain for very long, but when it comes, it really comes down. One friend commented to me, "Wow, I didn't realize there was that much water that could be held in the sky!!" So here are a few pictures that I took right outside my classroom. You can't really see, but you can kind of tell the intensity of the amount of rain that was coming down!

My Computer Hates my Blog

I've decided that my laptop at home hates my blog. I am not a computer idiot, nor am I a computer genius. So two things have been happening lately: 1.) I cannot update properly on my computer at home. When I try to get into my blog to write anything new, it will not load properly, therefore, I can type, but I cannot upload anypictures or do anything different with the font or anything. I can just type. But all of the other icons are just these squares with red "x"s in them. 2.) When I actually try to view my blog at home, it freezes that internet window. My computer hates my blog. I have no idea what is causing this, if my computer has some sort of a tortillas and beans virus or what. I can look at other people's blogs, but just not my own. Every once in a while, someone else's blog will also freeze up the window, but mine does it every time. It never fails. So anyway, that is the first reason (or two reasons, technically) for my lack of blogging. I used to do most of my blogging at home and then I would usually catch up on the weekends, but not so much of that anymore! Another reason is that my life has been fairly boring over this last week and I haven't really had anything to blog about. Nothing exciting last week, just working, going home, maybe running an errand in the evening, checking email, watching TV, talking on the phone, going to sleep, etc. So, last Friday after school, I went to this place right by our school where a lot of teachers go on Fridays for happy hour. We hung out there for about 4 hours, just chatting with other teachers. There was probably around 30 or so of us there. It was a fun time. I came home in a taxi with Stephanie, ate a slice of pizza, and was asleep by about 10:00 pm. Saturday, I woke up around 6:30 and started some laundry, changed my sheets, cleaned up my apartment and waited for my meeting with my landlord at 10:30. She showed up with her ever so cute daughter. This was the first time we had met, so just making sure that everything was ok. We talked for almost an hour. She's very nice. Then it started raining, so I just hung out in my apartment, finished up some cleaning, took a short cat nap. Then I walked down the street with my neighbors and we went to Cemaco and the grocery store. Exciting, I know. Then we came home, I ate some dinner, and was asleep by about 9:45. Sunday, I was awake by 7 am, was on my computer, not doing a lot. Stephanie and I had made plans to go to Pricesmart around 10. Around 9:00, a friend who works at the school and I were chatting and she said, hey do you want to go to church with me? I called Stephanie, she said yes, so our other friend, Kelly, took us to Pricesmart, we brought our cold foods home, and went to Spanish church. This one was a bit different as it was ALL in Spanish, no translations or anything. It was fun though. Then we came home, I cooked some lunch. Another friend from school who is helping me with my Spanish came over later and we hung out, watched some TV for a little bit. Then he left, I cooked some dinner later, and was asleep by about 10:30. Ohhhh, one other exciting thing I did was download all the new episodes of tv shows and get to watch them!!!! Grey's Anatomy, Ugly Betty, Desperate Housewives, Brothers and Sisters, How I Met Your Mother, One Tree Hill........Wooo hoooo. Now I can see how my social calendar is going to fill up for the next several months! ha ha. Then yesterday, school, home, today is a half day of school. Nothing too exciting. This is why I haven't been blogging lately. Also, I do have one exciting thing, but it is a surprise so I can't share it on my blog YET. And it has been all I have been thinking about for the past few days, so as soon as the surprise happens then I can actually blog about it!!!!! So there are my reasons. I don't even have any good pictures to post because I haven't taken any! ha. Have a good Tuesday and I will try to be more exciting this week.

Feliz Cumpleanos!

This weekend was pretty low key, after all the excitement last weekend. On Friday night, another teacher came over and we hung out and just watched tv and stuff. Saturday I lounged around for most of the morning and afternoon. I walked down to the Cemaco store by our house and the grocery store to pick up a few things. I wanted to make Danielle a cake for her birthday. There is this amazing chocolate cake that she introduced me to at this cafe. It is chocolate cake with this stuff that they call Arequipo (I think....something like that) in between the layers. It is this caramel/dulce de leche sauce that is pretty much just amazing. So I was going to try to duplicate the cake for her. I have to admit it turned out pretty good!!! She really liked it. I had to have Stephanie help me ice the outside of the cake, because I didn't want to ruin it! But, my mom explained a trick to me to cut the cake into layers. I made two round cakes from the mix and then she said you can use dental floss to split the cake and put the caramel in the middle of the layer as well. So I did it and it worked fabulously!!!! I was pretty proud of it. I should have taken a picture but I didn't! Oh well. We went to Danielle's house for a barbecue that night and then we went to Antigua to go dancing. The place was kind of cool, but I really wanted to dance to latin music! :) We still had a good time though. Here are just a few pictures that I took out dancing. I didn't take too many. :( Here is the birthday girl and myself!

This is me with Miguel and Danielle, they are so cute and fun!!! What great friends! Miguel thought he was pretty cool! ha ha.

Kenny.....Queny??

My name is hard for Latinos to say. I will admit it. Anytime we are in a loud place or if it is over the phone, it is really hard for them to understand what my name is. They don't have that short a sound in their language, what is in my name, Kaaaaaaaaaammie. So when I lived in Connecticut and my friends and I first started going out to the Spanish places, I would usually just say my name was Maria. It was just easier, they could understand it, and it didn't really matter much that they didn't know my real name. So, I've had a few issues with my name so far here in Guatemala. The first funny incident was when I got in a taxi one night. When you call for a taxi, they ask for your name and then when you get into the taxi, your name is on this little screen. Well, I had someone call for me (I'm still too nervous to do it) and when I got in, I looked at the screen and it says, "Kenny." Well, ok whatever.....Kenny, Kammie? So I just laughed and texted my friend to tell her. Then we ordered pizza the other night. Again, made my friend do it. He gave them my name though since we were at my house. So when we got the pizza I noticed on the box my name......see if you can see it in the picture:

QUENY BASS......nice! I am really going to have to change my name if I am going to live in a Spanish speaking country! :)

Pan Chapin

We have quite a bit of planning time at my school. I do use a lot of it for planning, grading, getting ready for the next day, etc. I rarely have to take work home. There are times though when I would rather spend time with friends at school than do work, especially on those days when I have a lot of free time (like today!!!) Sometimes I do take work home, but it is pretty much by choice. Twice a week (Tuesdays and Fridays) I have coffee dates with my friend Danielle. We usually go for the iced coffee/frozen drinks, but lately I have been on an Americano rampage! They are so good! About three weeks ago, Danielle also introduced me to Pan Chapin. Most of you know what a picky eater I am, so I don't try a whole lot of new things. It's also a little intimidating to ask about something and what it is in a different language. Danielle lived in Honduras for a few years teaching and she is also married to a Guatemalan, so her Spanish is pretty darn good! One day she says, "That pan chapin looks good." I asked what that was. She said, oh it's just bread with refried beans in it. I said, only that??? She said, oh and some cheese. So I said, hmmm, I will try one. WOW. It is sooooo good! It is pretty much like a bean burrito but on bread not in a tortilla. They put it on this George Foreman type of thing and warm it up and toast it and it is soooo delicious!!! The name comes from pan = bread and chapin = a Guatemalan person who is very proud to be Guatemalan! So since beans are one of the staple foods here, it pretty much = Guatemala! Oh, PS, their refried beans are sooooo good, because they are actually made from black beans. Yummmmmmmy. I just finished my Tuesday pan chapin!

Our campus is connected to the university campus, we just have to walk through a gate, so they have two coffee shops that we like to frequent up there! This is where we always go for coffee and pan chapin.

Hot Girls Read

Sorry I didn't post this weekend, for some reason my computer at home has been weird on blogger the last few times I have tried to post so I will have to do most of my posting from school. With my awesome schedule here, it shouldn't be too much of a problem!!!!! So I just had to share this funny bit of info before I post about my weekend and a few other random pictures that I wanted to post. We have our advisory class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for a half hour. Every Monday is what we call Libros, where the kids just read for the 30 minutes. They can bring in anything (appropriate of course) to read for that time. Well, the kids aren't super fond of it but it works. So today, these girls come in and ask what we are doing in advisory. I say, it's Monday, Libros. One girl says, aaaawwwwww, like yuck. And this other girl says, oh yeah, it's Libros. Then she proceeds to tell me, "Miss Bass, I have a bumper sticker and it says, 'Hot Girls Read.'" ha ha ha. Anyway, I just found that very humorous that a 7th grader would say that! :) Have a nice Monday!

Our trip back home!

Our trip home ended up to prove itself pretty interesting as well. We had to figure out who all we knew that was down at the beach and then who had a few extra spaces here and there to get us and all of our luggage home. If all else had failed, we could have sent our luggage home with some people and caught a shuttle or a bus back into town. I didn't really want to do that and mess with it after the rough ride down there! So we found one group who didn't have any spaces for people, but they had space for our luggage. Then we had another group of friends who had space to fit two more people, tightly! Then there was one other teacher who we knew was there but no one had his phone number. So we called around to some others and got his number and called him. He had room for two more as well. Since he is Guatemalan and he said we would be leaving around noon (Guatemalan noon that is......) Stephanie and I let the other two girls ride home with Stephanie's roommate, since they needed to get Jenna to the bus so she could get back home where she lives. Stephanie and I sent Jenna and Janet off with the girls at around 11:00 am and went to pack up and relax in the hammock until we heard from Jorge. We heard from him around 11:45 and he said, one more hour. We were like ok, no problem, we knew it wouldn't truly be noon when we left! So then we relaxed for a bit longer. He showed up around 1:15. No problem, we got our bags in the car and he says, "Oh, there's a little problem. My friends are all drunk down at the beach." Oh great. So we were like, well what are we going to do? He said, well, I just want to wait with them for maybe another hour to make sure they are ok. So we went to go hang out with about nine Guatemalan guys who, mostly (not all), were pretty drunk and probably had been for about three days for the holiday!!! They were pretty funny though. When we first walked up, there were these two cops standing there and I was like oh great, here comes some trouble with the Guatemalan police (I was picturing myself calling someone from a jail cell or something when I couldn't speak enough Spanish to say that I was not involved in anything!!!). Well, when we got closer, I notice the police are just standing there holding their cups of whiskey as well. They were there drinking with them. Nice. So anyway, we ended up hanging out there with them for about 2-3 hours. They were pretty entertaining and I also got this awesome picture with the Guatemalan police. I was pretty disappointed though that you can't see their huge guns that they all carry. They are to the side!

After his friends finished their fourth bottle of whiskey, they were finally ready to leave. Stephanie and I got to squish in the back of a Honda Civic with another Guatemalan guy and there was another drunk guy pretty much passed out in the front seat. As we were driving home there were a few Independence Day parades that we ran into in these little small towns. They were really cute and only took about five minutes to pass. I had Stephanie try to lean out the window to take a picture for me!

Here we are having fun squished together in the back seat!!!

We were a little over halfway home (about 5:30 or 6 by this time) and the guys were like, oh are you hungry? We are going to stop for dinner. We were like ok sure! So we stopped, along with the other truckful of guys that were drinking on the beach as well. They were so loud and obnoxious at this restaurant. Anyway, we finally finished eating, and then Stephanie and I made them take a picture with each of us so we wouldn't forget them. ha ha. Like that would have happened.

We hit a little bit of traffic on our way home and then finally made it home around 8:15 or so!!! But at least we were safe and we were truly glad to make it home alive!!!!

Our Hotel

Here is the room with the mosquito nets hanging down around them. There was one double bed and two twin beds. The room was not big at all. Very very tight. And hot. Other than that, it was ok!

We had read that this place had the biggest pool in Monterrico. It was pretty big and nice and never too crowded. But there weren't too many chairs around. It was fine though!

Me looking scared and creeped out inside my mosquito net!

There was this other little smaller pool that was nice and cool that we hung out in as well.

The hammocks out in the front where we spent some quality relaxation time!

This was the restaurant where we ate a few times. It was not too great!

So our hotel was ok. You know how some people say that pictures didn't do it justice, well let's just say that these pictures did this place more than justice!!!!! ha ha. Peace out!

Monterrico

After the accident/adventure, the nice people that helped us took us to the beach and we ended up having a fun relaxing weekend on the beach. There were some other teachers there as well so we were able to hang out all together, swim in each other's pools, and enjoy each other's company. It was a fun time. We went dancing at places right on the beach both nights we were there, and did a lot of relaxing. I laid in a hammock more than I ever have, and slept under a mosquito net for the first time ever! It was quite the experience! I am not a high class traveler but this place we stayed was definitely below what I would call my vacation standards. It had no air conditioning, just one fan, and the room was really small. It worked, as somewhere to sleep, but not really my idea vacation. We were very hot at night. Anyway, here are a few pictures to recap our weekend! This first one is where we caught the ferry to take us out to the beach where we were. They were these rackety old ferry boats that held less than 8 people each, yet there were some that you could supposedly put your car on!!!! I'm not sure I would have trusted them! Here is the ferry area, and a boat with a few motorcycles on it!

Janet and I on the ferry boat, still a little scratchy and glassy!

The guide wanted a picture with Janet after we took our picture. He really wanted her to get back there right next to him but she politely declined! He doesn't look too thrilled to just get a background photo! ha ha.

All of the sand there is black sand, so we had heard about how hot it was and that you couldn't even walk on the sand. One guy even bet me that I wouldn't be able to walk from the hotel to the water without my shoes. It was definitely really hot and it even burned when it slid into your shoes for a brief moment. We saw people with burns on their feet! I took this picture after the sun was pretty much down and it was cloudy out, to try to convince my friend that I was able to walk on the sand!!!!

We spent a lot of time just hanging out, eating and drinking on the beach! This was at the restaurant where our friends were staying.

the beach!

my foot in the black sand! wow, i just realized you can even see a faint glimpse of a flip flop tan on there! ha!

Friends, Cara and Brian out playing in the water. The waves are really strong there, you can see and the undertow is really strong as well, so it will pull you out there really far really fast. And it gets deep very very fast, so you can't really go out and swim in the ocean. You can only play in the waves close to the sand.

Just a view looking back from the beach to the places.

The national beer of Guatemala is called Gallo and their "mascot" is a hen, so Brian told us that a Guatemalan had told him that when you want to order Gallo, you can just do this sign and then put up how many fingers of how many you want. We thought this guy was just pulling his chain to make him look stupid, but then we asked the waitress and she said he was right! So we always let Brian order our drinks for us when we wanted a Gallo!!!

I spent a lot of time sleeping in the hammock over the weekend! You can't really see that this is me, but someone snuck a picture of me in the hammock while I was sleeping. I found it later!

Beautiful sunset our last night there while walking on the beach!

It was just so pretty!!!!

And one last view!!!!!

The Accident

We planned to leave on Saturday morning around 9:00. Janet came to pick up Stephanie and I from our apartment. We got all of our stuff loaded and we were off. We were all really excited and after just a little confusion about which way we were supposed to go, we were headed to the beach in Monterrico. It was a long windy road to get down to the beach. There is just one road where you have to turn off to get to this ferry that takes you out to the beach town. After you make that turn it's maybe just another 15 or 20 minutes down the road. I had been dozing on and off on our way down, but since we were right at the spot where that turn was, I was awake trying to take it all in. When we were coming around this corner, I saw this semi truck coming right at us. Janet, calmly said, "What is this guy doing?" About that time I really think I kind of saw my life flash in front of me. I wasn't sure if we were going to make it or not if this guy hit us head on. This guy was full on in our lane, and he was going fast. Janet got over far enough that thankfully he missed the front end of her car. Otherwise I think we would have been goners. He was close enough though that he hit her side mirror on the drivers side and then hit the rest of the car on the driver's side and then drove off. All of the glass from my back window (I was sitting behind Janet) and the glass from the back hatch window all came in as well. The driver and passenger had their windows down which saved us from some glass. Since he didn't hit the front of the car, we didn't spin or flip or roll or anything. We just got knocked off the road and then stopped. We just sat there and made sure each other were ok. We could all move and didn't have any serious injuries, just a few scratches here and there. But then we had no idea what to do. Before we knew it, about four people had come up to the car and were asking if we were ok. Luckily Jenna and Janet's Spanish are both amazing!!! And the people spoke a little bit of English. So they ended up helping us out of the car, brushing glass off of us, wiping my nose, getting the glass out of our shoes, giving us juice, etc. They were SOOOO nice. The two men thought the car would be driveable so they got right down and changed the tire that had gotten demolished and put the spare tire on. The Guatemalan police stopped by, took some pictures of the car and of us, shook our hands, said "Mucho gusto" and drove off. Real helpful. So this one guy tells us he lives like three minutes away and we can drive the car to his house and he can take us to the beach and then we can figure out what to do with the car later. So, Janet and Jenna are driving in Janet's car and Stephanie and I are riding with our new friend. (Who by the way had a pistol tucked into the back of his pants......I mean, who wouldn't feel safe with this guy???) The girls behind us start slowing down, because the tire is completely flat (the spare tire they put on). So the guy gets out, asks if they would rather him drive that car and he let us drive his car!! We got to his house, I have no idea how the car made it there. Oh, PS, while we were on the side of the road and driving people were just driving by and staring like crazy at us!!! So we got there, his family was all there (brothers, sisters, daughter, cousins probably...) and they got all of our stuff out of the car, put in the back of the pickup truck, loaded us in the back of the truck and took us to the ferry to go to the beach. Such nice people. WOW. Things could have been a million times worse for so many cases!!! Check out the pictures.

I think Stephanie is either itching mosquito bites or trying to get glass out of her shirt!

I didn't know Stephanie was going to make a sad face or I would have too. This was after we were at the guy's house, so I was feeling much happier! :) If you look closely you can see the scratches on our faces.

You can't even really see the scratches on my face anymore, just one on my lip that I can feel all the time! Other than that, I walked away with a few scratches on my legs and a kinda bad bruise on my leg where the impact hit. I still can't believe it. I keep picturing that truck coming right at us. I'm thankful to be alive!

Guatemalan Independence Day

Monday was Guatemalan Independence Day, so we had the day off from school. We had some special celebrations at school on Friday and we were allowed to wear blue and white attire for Guatemala. I really wanted a soccer jersey anyway, so I figured this was the perfect opportunity to go ahead and get one and then I could wear jeans to school as well! :) I took a few pictures with my advisory group that was wearing their jerseys as well! (This is right outside my classroom!!!)

With a few of my sweet girls in my advisory.

With my good friend Danielle. She is so much fun! We went together and bought our jerseys off the side of the road! There was this guy selling all kinds of Guatemalan gear to wear or decorate with out of the back of his truck! It was quite an experience. Then the next day at school, our other friend told us that her husband said we could have gotten it cheaper than what we paid at the Puma store in the mall. Oh well.

Car Accident

I am about to head home from the beach weekend. I will write a long post when I get home but I was just sitting here waiting for my ride home and thought I would write a quick update. On Saturday morning, we left (four of us girls) to come down to the beach. We were right where the turn off is to come to the ferry to get to the beach when this big semi truck came into our lane around this corner, going way faster than he should have been and ran into the entire side of our friends car. He ran us off the road a little bit, all the glass in all the windows shattered and then he drove off. We are all ok, we walked away with a few scratches here and there. I am still having a hard time getting over that fact. It was really scary. I have some pictures and other stories that I will share when I get back. But, I am alive and my friends are alive and we are ok. There were some very very very nice Guatemalan people that stopped and helped us with everything. Anyway, I am about to go pack up and get ready to head back into the city. Another fellow teacher is giving us a ride back. We already sent two of the other girls back in another car. Will post more soon! Happy Guatemalan Independence Day!!!!

Feliz Dia de la Independencia

Well Monday is a holiday so we have a long weekend. A few nights ago a few other friends and I decided that we really wanted to get away. We had wanted to but didn't really know where to go and what to do. Well, we booked a room in Monterrico on the beach. I am leaving in about 20 minutes and my back is not completely packed so I will make this short, but just wanted to let you know I won't be back until Monday night. Have a good weekend and I will have plenty of pictures I'm sure when I get back to post!!!!!

My Spanish Tutor

No, I haven't hired a Spanish tutor yet, but this is what I'm using for now.......American/English television and reading the Spanish subtitles! For example here is a clip from Friends.......Monica is saying, "And when I told her that I was going to live with Chandler," Now, I'm not sure if I can really read that or if I just watch way too much Friends and I can just remember what was going on in this clip. ha ha ha.

LIBROS

Every Monday in seventh grade advisory, we do something called Libros. We take the whole time to read silently. The kids can bring whatever they want to read, magazines, books, comics, whatever. I don't think my kids like it much so this week I told them they could sit or lay or whatever anywhere they wanted in the classroom. Some of them took some interesting poses. You can see below! :)

For Gretchen

While living in Korea, it seemed that Dr. Pepper was this huge "fix" for Gretchen and I. I'm not sure if it was the fact that it was like the only American product besides bagels in our cafeteria or what. I mean, I like Dr. Pepper, but it's not like that was the only thing I drank while living in the US. But we drank a LOT of it in Korea. So I took this picture for you, sistah!!!! :) If you come to Guatemala, I will buy some Dr. Pepper and have it in the refrigerator waiting for you!

Seventh Grade Team

We have such a fun seventh grade team!!! I have really enjoyed working with them so far this year! There are five out of eight of us that are new this year! I am right next door to the Spanish teacher which is fun, for when I need a translator for a variety of issues! Here is our "fun" pose, if you can't tell we are in a 7 for seventh grade!!!!

Here is a more traditional pose of us!

Out of Touch

I know I have been a horrible blogger lately. My sister reminds me often! :) So here's the deal from the last time I blogged. Last Friday I hurried home from school to wait for the cable and internet guy who was supposed to be there after 3 pm. He never showed up. I stayed home until about 7:00, not knowing how late the people worked and too chicken to make a phone call to try to ask about if the guy was coming or not! So he never came. I didn't have cable or internet for the weekend. It was fine, just a bit boring! ha ha. I also didn't have hot water, pots and pans, a refrigerator, a bathroom mirror (or mirror at all for that matter) or curtains for my windows in my bedroom. I stayed in on Friday and went to bed early. Lame, I know. I couldn't take a shower, because the breaker went off approximately every four minutes. Saturday I woke up to the doorbell ringing at 8:15. It was Francisco, the building manager, checking on my hot water. I made him stay until the breaker went off so he could see the problem. He explained to me, in Spanish, what the issue was. I had no clue. I nodded and smiled (what I do best). He left, I slept for a bit longer, and then woke up and waited for the delivery of my tv, dvd player, and microwave. It came around noon. I was happy. Then, the girls in my building and I decided to walk down to the big grocery store that delivers. I was supposed to get my refrigerator by Monday so we bought a whole lot of groceries. Then our other friend called and said she would come pick us up and take us home from the grocery store. She came when we were finished shopping and took us home with our groceries. Then we went to Pricesmart (think Costco). I had a very detailed list of what I wanted. I was doing fine until I got to the pots and pans. The ones I wanted were not there anymore. Uggghhhh. So I bought all the other things on my list and a few more things (like macaroni and cheese, pop-tarts, and diet coke) that weren't on my list! We came home and just chilled for awhile. When we got home, Stephanie and I could hear this party going on upstairs on the top floor. We have this amazing party room that we can reserve at our building. I was dying to go up and see what was going on and maybe try to meet some of our neighbors but we didn't want to crash the party. So we stayed home. Then a few friends came over later and they were like, oh, these guys in the elevator invited us up to the party. I jumped up from my chair and said, ok, I'm going to take a shower. I have been dying to go all day!!! So I hurried and showered at Stephanie's house and then got ready quickly. We went upstairs and the party was pretty much over. They had started early for this guys birthday because the Guatemala soccer game was on tv! Ends up his aunt lives in the building so it wasn't even our neighbors. Oh well. Hung out for a little bit more that night. Sunday morning, Danielle picked me up for church. It was a Spanish church that had English translations through a headset. It was really good. Although my favorite part of the sermon was when the pastor was talking about this baseball player. (The sermon was on fear of failure.) He was explaining how this guy struck out so many times. The translator kept saying how the guy got punched so many times! ha ha. After church we came home. I took a nap. Had a friend come over later in the afternoon. We walked to Cemaco together and I bought a mirror. Came home, hung out, I graded some papers, then took a lukewarm bath (as I stood by the breaker to turn it on every time it went off), and went to bed. Monday, school was fine. I was able to take the early bus to school which is so nice to get here more than 15 minutes before kids get here and since it is early, no students, so we get here so much faster. I had an hour to email in the morning and get other things done before the kiddos came. Bad part, leaving my apartment at 5:55 AM!!!! And I'm not a morning person! Monday, had Student Center after school, went home, no refrigerator, waited for it, nothing. The cable guys were supposed to come at 4:30. They showed up at 6:00 pm. I now have cable, internet, and my lingo line back up! Tuesday, school, meetings after school, came home at 4:00 to wait for the refrigerator, nothing. But, I had cable! :) Wednesday, school, and then we had Open House for our parents last night. It went really well. The parents are really nice and I think everything went over smoothly. I was exhausted going home at 7:30 last night. I went upstairs to get some leftover pizza from Stephanie's refrigerator and talked for a few minutes. Went downstairs, and I had my refrigerator!!!!!! I was so happy!!! I called my mom, it was her birthday yesterday! Happy birthday, mom. I love you! Sorry for the bad phone call, I was exhausted! I hung up, warmed up some pizza to eat, tried to watch a little tv, and fell asleep around 9:15 pm. I woke up early this morning because I would have to take a bath. I started the bath water, went to wait by the breaker, and it never went off!!!!!!! So I went and drained the bath and took my first shower in my apartment this morning!!! I was really happy again! :) Now I'm at school, one more class to go, and feeling pretty good about my classes! :) I love my kids! They are so fun. I am trying to figure out a plan for this weekend, we have Monday off, it's el dia de la independencia! I'm sure you can figure that one out! I will take pictures of the kids tomorrow decked out in their blue and white or traditional clothing! OK, peace out, kids coming back soon!

Weekend Without E-mail????

Yes, you read that correctly! I did just survive a weekend without email or internet access!! The internet and cable guy was supposed to come on Friday, but apparantly he came before I got home from school, so he is scheduled to come today at 4:30. Hopefully he will really make it. So this weekend brought the delivery of my tv/dvd player/microwave, it brought a lot of shopping, and some fun times spent with good friends. I went to church on Sunday to a Spanish service (they provide headphones with the translation) and it was really good. I really liked it. OK, well I came to school early this morning so I could check my email before the kids came, but now I actually do need to get some work done. I will post again later with some more details over the weekend! Just didn't want anyone to be worried about me. ha ha!

Coming Together

I hurried home from school yesterday to finish packing up my things from the hotel. The school van was coming at 4:30 and we hit a lot of traffic on our way home yesterday. I didn't get home until about 4:10 and hurried upstairs to finish packing. I finished and about 4:25 or so I started taking loads of stuff down to the lobby to wait. I got everything down there around 4:40 and got checked out of the hotel. I figured the van would be a little late due to all the traffic, but I wanted this to be as speedy as possible to have as much time as possible for getting unpacked and settled into my apartment. I started grading some papers while sitting there and talking to my friends at the front desk. Around 5:30 I started to get a little annoyed. Another (the only one left) teacher came home and she decided to order a pizza and I was going to eat with her if they still weren't there yet. I texted my friend who lives here to see if I could hire her to come be my mover!! She is from El Salvador so she called the school and spoke (in Spanish, of course) to the transportation department. They said they took some furniture to my house and to another house first and then they would be there for me in about a half hour! I was like, WHAT?? So, kept grading some papers and figured at least I'll be here for the pizza and get something to eat for dinner as well. She called me at 6:15 and they still weren't there yet so she called the transportation department back and they said they would be here shortly. Finally around 6:30 or so they showed up. Here is a picture of all my stuff sitting in the lobby of the hotel! (A little more than the three bags I packed to come down here!!!)

So, I got all unloaded at the hotel, and the refrigerator and stove are still not installed. Not a huge deal, but a little bit of a pain! I went to the bathroom, tried to flush the toilet, and NO WATER!!! So I called my neighbors (other teachers) and we went downstairs to ask the guys, because they also didn't have hot water. So he came upstairs, turned my water on and also turned on my hot water. Then I started unpacking my stuff. So my neighbor calls and asks if she can come take a hot shower at my house as they didn't have hot water. I said, sure. So she takes one and says the hot water went out halfway through the shower. I keep unpacking. I realize how much I don't have at the apartment, which is fine! Finally I pass out around 10:15 and slept "ok" for my first time there. My room really really really needs some blinds/curtains so I was wide awake from the light outside at 5:30 this morning. But at least I didn't oversleep!!! But I had a lot of spare time since I didn't have hot water to take a shower!!!! Ha ha. Here are some pictures with my furniture and stuff in it. I haven't figured out exactly how I want everything arranged but this will do for now! This is my bedroom with two glass walls/windows from floor to ceiling. It's beautiful, just bright! :)

My living room and new couch set!!! I love the green! I wasn't so sure about it at first but I really like it in this place!

Another view of the living room!

And the kitchen missing some of the appliances. You can see the washer and DRYER (WOOOO HOOOOO) back in the back as well!