Plans

Apparently, the most underused tool on the 07-09 summer maintenance staff was the machete. I learned this today as I saw the many versatile uses of this oversized knife. Twice today, I saw men on 20 foot ladders hacking away at unwanted branches with machetes. It very much reminded me of Seth climbing up our ladder at camp to try and get the cables down. No sooner was I past these men, then I saw a man mowing his lawn with... a machete. Never again will I complain about mowing the lawn at home with a push mower. Never again.

Today was more or less a day of planning. It began with my making a shopping list and getting ready to go to the local supermarket. I had grand plans of dozens of meals that I would cook for myself here in my apartment. Spaghetti, pizza, grilled chicken, kabobs, burritos, chicken fingers, all graced the dinner list. For breakfast, I started simple and got more extravagant with cereal, oatmeal, eggs, pancakes, bacon, hash browns, breakfast burritos! My mouth literally watered with anticipation of the tasty treats soon to be prepared by myself.

Before I got to go to the store, however, the landlord stopped by and we had a chat about the lease. He brought it up, and I began to read through it. I realized that it was going to take much longer than we both had for me to really get the meat of the lease, and suggested that I read the document on my own and share any questions or problems with him later. He agreed, and then talked with me for a while about some black people who lived here before me and were even taller than me. It was weird.

When I got to the grocery store, I began stockpiling on all of the delicious foods before realizing that I didn't really know how to make most of them. Chicken parmesean sounds fantastic, and I know that there is chicken, cheese, sauce, and pasta. So I got those things. I'm just not sure what to do with them now...

After shopping, I met up with Maricela at Plaza for lunch. She brought her 4 year old daughter who was absolutely adorable. At first, she was a little shy, but after introducing me to her Barney doll, Mari opened up to me just fine. We had Chinese for lunch, except for Mari, who ate french fries from Wendy's. After a litte bit of Q&A with me, such as "Do you know Barney?" "Do you know Disney Princesses?" and "Do you know that I can dance with my eyes closed?" Mari and I became quick friends.

While Maricela and I tried discussing the political situation, we were somewhat distracted by games such as "Octopus and Crab" or "You're the monster" and sometimes even "My hand is stronger than your hand", which I was absolutely terrible at, much to my dismay. She reminded me a lot of Emily.

After lunch, Maricela gave me her phone and her phone charger with some minutes to call home with, and we went our seperate ways. I came back home, put on some work out clothes and headed up to the gym that is on the roof. The treadmill was broken, but the bike machine worked, so I took some turns doing a few different weight lifting exercises coupled with the cardio of the bike machine. It was certainly the most scenic work out I've ever had.

I showered after the brief workout, and then took a short nap. I woke up around dinner time, and made myself pizza with the ingredients I had purchased earlier. It was delicious. I watched bits and pieces of a couple of movies, spoken in Spanish, but with English subtitles in case I need to cheat.

Around 7:30 or so, I called home and talked with Mom, Dad, Bobo, and Susan's voicemail for a while. It was good to talk with them.

My camera decided that it needed to be difficult today, so I spent some time after the phone calls home to work on trying to get the pictues I've taken so far to transfer to the computer. With a lot of hard work, and even more luck, I finally got it to work. After uploading the pictures, I realized that most of them were from either work or from my apartment, so I took out one of the tourist books that Patty had given me earlier in the week, and began planning places in the city to visit tomorrow.