Saturday January 26

Yesterday was my last day of classes for the week, a day that seemed to take forever to reach. I hope next week doesn’t drag on like this one did; maybe it’s just that I’m used to having only four days of classes a week, but I felt like this week took at least two. And it’s still only Saturday.

There’s a truck that sells propane tanks around the neighborhood, and every morning it starts driving by at about 6:30am, honking incessantly. This continues for about an hour every day. I’m slowly learning to sleep through it, but I still wake up every morning cursing. Lucía said that most of the exchange students she’s had have wanted to kill the driver, and I must say I agree.

The four of us from Keene stopped in María Isabel’s office after classes yesterday to ask about getting our Censos and to see if I could connect to the school wireless network. The answer to both was “Yes, later.” By the time I left school to go home, it was 1pm, the time when all the local middle and high schools let out. The Ecovia stop was so crammed I could barely fit myself in…and it was nothing compared to the Ecovia itself. The first train passed by so crammed that no one else could get in, so we waited for the next one. That was also crammed, but somehow a few of us managed to squeeze in. I wore my backpack forwards, as I always do, and I was squeezed in so tight I didn’t have to hold onto the bar when we took off, because I literally couldn’t move. The entire mass of human sardines leaned one way or the other when the bus moved, but nobody could fall. I rode all twelve stops just as squished as when I got on.

Eventually I made it back to the house, hot and feeling distinctly skinnier than I had twenty minutes earlier, and I had lunch with Lucía and Meri. Then I took a shower and got ready to go out, because Marie, Braulio and I were going to meet Liz and her brother in a dance club that night. I took a taxi to El Jardín, and I got one of the creepy drivers who kept looking over his shoulder at me every time he stopped. It looked like he wanted to say something, so I deliberately stayed on the phone the whole time, and he kept his mouth shut.

I met Braulio, and then Erin and Aime, and the four of us caught the bus to Marie’s. We hung around and had a couple of beers, then headed out to find dinner. We left too late, and the buses weren’t running, so we actually walked most of the way into town – and she lives way out the north-west end of the city, actually off my city map. I wished I hadn’t worn heels.

We wound up back at El Jardín somehow, eating Domino’s pizza for dinner. Then we headed to Tonic, the club Liz told us about, arriving at about 9:30. It was raining by that time, and then we learned that the club doesn’t even open until 10:10, and even then they don’t let everyone in. So we hung around under a little tent waiting for Liz, who eventually showed up at 10:30. By that time I was exhausted and just wanted to go to bed, and Marie and Braulio agreed with me. We went in for a little while, though, just to try it out. The two of them woke up, but I didn’t, so I left just a little past midnight, hailing another taxi and getting lucky that the driver was of the normal variety.