Fast forward: Friday, March 14, 2008: A Remarkable Day!

I begin my day at sunrise, 6AM. It is a glorious day. Bright, sunny and breezy! The calm after last night’s downpour.

I anticipate this day because my mother leaves the convalescent hospital where she has been for the last three months recovering and recuperating from her surgery on January 7th. She is a very strong woman, physically and emotionally. And anyone who knows Alice, knows this. It has been very hard for her to have things done for her because she has always been the one doing things for others. She has gained enough strength through physical therapy that the nurses feel that she will be okay at home. Of course, there is outside help that will come in and assist her for awhile. She has friends to help her readjust. My daughter Ali, God bless her, is spending her Spring Break from college living at my mother’s house helping her grandmother adapt as well as working her regular inventory job to build up her bank account. I consider my mother’s going home my Easter gift, wrapped in cellophane with a big pink and yellow bow, forget the chocolate bunny and colored eggs. This is our Easter miracle.

Today, I am up early enough to make real coffee before I bike to the Station for breakfast. I have never used this kind of cylinder plunger carafe coffee maker before. This house has a big 5 gallon water cooler to have fresh water to drink, and there are no formal measuring tools available to me; no 1 cup measure, no Tablespoon. I find a saucepan and eyeball the amount of water to boil. I look to make more than one cup and save the rest for iced coffee over the weekend. That sounds just perfect to me! I light the gas burner, and put the water on the stove to boil. I bought and brought a bag of Galapagos coffee, appropriately named Lava Java, with me. I take it from the freezer and measure 2 heaping tablespoons for the carafe. I think that this is good enough. I pour the boiling water into the carafe and stir it. I don’t know if you are supposed to, but I do it anyway. Then I test a tablespoon just to see the color. It doesn’t look very dark to me so I add more coffee and stir it again. This is more like it. I put the ground coffee package back in the freezer and I am ready to plunge the coffee and see what I have created. I pour a cup, and it looks good. There isn’t any container or pitcher here for me to pour the remainder into, so I pour another cup, and then another. Good. I add my milk and take a sip. Remarkable!

I am very worried about my computer. It acted so weird last night and all. I think that I may as well face the inevitable and plug it in and turn it on. It works! I am so elated that I say, Thank you God, right out loud in the middle of the dining room. Remarkable!

Yesterday I forgot to put my computer out of sight. Mandy said just in case a.) there is a break-in and robbery, or b.) the workmen working on the house come inside, it would be best to keep it hidden from view. I have chosen to “hide” it in Molly’s room on the bottom shelf of her bookcase among her toys, books and shoes. I pack up my computer and hide it upstairs.

I start and finish getting ready for work and using the water. I need to turn it off while I am gone. No need to have repeat of Tuesday.  I decide that I will bring my dirty clothes back to the dorm area and use the washing machine. Hopefully no one will be using it this morning and I can start my laundry before breakfast.

I remember that I want to dump the compost from the kitchen onto the pile outside; coffee grounds plus wooden match sticks; not a whole lot of composting, but better to get it out of the house.

It is 7:10 and time to get gone! My regular backpack stuff on my back and my laundry in a plastic bag in the front basket. My bike ride is not too hazardous. My brakes work without squealing today. There is one giant puddle in front of a speed bump on the National Park/Research Station road. I hop off the bike, walk the bike on the loose volcanic rock sidewalk around the bump, and jump on the bike and go. There are groups of touristas walking to the Station to see the environs and the tortugas this morning. I wind my way around them, saying Hola! Buenos Dias! as I ride by.

I bike to the dorms first to see if the washing machine is empty, and it is not. Drats! I think to myself, if I wasn’t so damn cheap I would just drop my wash at the local launderer. It opens at 7:30 AM and closes at 8:30 PM, and you pay by the pound. I have no idea what it costs per pound though, so I think I will still do my own laundry.

I open my room and drop the bag of dirty laundry in. I see Lilith as she comes out of her room. She asks me if I am going to breakfast and I say Yes, I will meet you there because I have my bike. We are all set to meet and eat on the porch of the comedor. The waitress, Maria, knows what I want already, but asks Lilith what she wants. As a vegetarian, she eats eggs, cheese, but no fish, meat, or fowl. I don’t know how she can pass up an egg for breakfast, but she tells me that the cook will make her eggs at lunchtime. Ah-ha, the lightbulb.

At breakfast, she tells me her friends are here and she is going with them to Isabela today on the 2 PM boat. I tell her that I want a full accounting describing what she does, where she stays, where she ate, what the boat ride is like, all of it. I really want to visit this island with George when he’s here. It is the biggest island and it has three tall volcanoes and four smaller ones on it. From Villamil, the town, you can climb up to one of the bigger volcanoes, Sierra Negra. I think that you can get a bus or taxi ride part of the way up (to a small mountain town, Santo Tomás) and then you can go on horseback for the next part of the ascent, and then even the horses can’t climb it, you have to walk the rest of the way on your own two feet. Anyway, I really want to go.

It is time to go to open the Library and I get the key to the Library’s bodega. This is a store room of old runs of journals, plus the Galapagos Research newsletter/magazine that the Station produces. This newsletter is the journal that the Library exchanges for other similar journals out there in Serial land. I only have an inkling of the work involved with this exchange program, but Paulina has asked me to help her figure it out. What I am curious about is the dehumidifier in this area. Occasionally, but not regularly, a Station employee will come into the Library, and ask for the keys to the bodega. He empties the dehumidifier here and in the Library, and I haven’t seen him for days. I think that I am doing the right thing, but when I go to take out the removable tray, it is not even full. There must be someone else who has a key to this space who empties it daily. Hmm. The things you learn. 

I go back into the Library and dump my dehumidifier. At least I know that the other one has someone watching it and emptying it. I start the OPAC PC and the Librarian’s PC. I think that the day is so spectacular outside that if anyone comes into the Library today, I will be surprised. Not to mention that it is Friday. Fridays, I have found, are really slow Library user days. I read and write some email messages. Normally, I would not do this during work hours, but today is The Remarkable Day. I get one from my friend, Marion, who is organizing my mother’s transition to her house today. She writes me and others who is doing what when and how. I am happy to read it. I pray that it all works out.

I have Library work to do. I keep finding errors in the database and upgrading it as I go along. When Michael Dvorak was in the Library he got me to thinking about the California Academy of Sciences and then the American Museum of Natural History. There was an email once a while back on a listserv (?), in the Scout Report (?) in the Docuticker (?) that indicated that the AMNH had all of its publications digitized and, cataloger that I am, I wrote to ask the Librarian if there were individual bib records for each title in MARC format available. I think the final upshot was No. But think of all of those Bulletins of the AMNH that have been published over the years. Cowabunga! What a gold mine. I get to amnh.org online and find the digital library. I search the word Galapagos for any of the AMNH publications and get 23 hits. I compare the Library OPAC data and holdings with the hits. The PDFs are humongous. There is even a warning on the amnh website indicating that these files are huge and there is a Download FAQ, to help the innocent user. As the morning draws to noon, the Internet slows way down. There is no way that I would ever download any large files like these. I just upgrade the bib records, adding the MARC 856 field for the URL.

I catalog and input one title that the CDRS Library does not own already. I know that I am supposed to have a PDF file to go with it, but I do not. Access to the information, at least in my mind, is just as good as having a giant PDF file that I wouldn’t be able to push to anyone here anyway. Too big! This is the real virtual library, baby! (And I am once again reminded how my daughter loves oxymorons. How about “real virtual” for a new one?)

When nature calls, I take a break and leave a note on the Library door. I go to the dorm bathroom and check the laundry again. Regrettably, the laundry that was in there this morning is still in the washer. I don’t think that it is a good idea to take another person’s clothes out of the washer because I wouldn’t want someone taking my clothes out of the washing machine. So I am stuck until the mystery person takes out his or her laundry.

I decide today I am going to seriously look at the Tee-shirts that they sell at the Station. There are two tiendas by the torugas; one for ice cream and drinks, another for books, posters, maps and clothing. I look at logos, see one that I want, but it comes only size is XS. Ugh! I find another that has Darwin’s finches on the back, and I try it on and buy a size Medium. It is a little tight, but it will do. I buy two circular Charles Darwin Research Station stickers, too. Total, $15 and change.

I go back to work happy with my purchases, and work on cataloging, the OPAC and the AMNH stuff. And it’s lunchtime. I lock the Library and head to the dorm to wash my hands. I look in the washing machine , it is still not empty, and I think, maybe it would have been better to have brought my laundry to the local MonYFri launderer, not even a block away from the house where I am staying. Oh darn it! I made the decision to bring it here and do it here. Get over it!

Again I see Lilith at the dorm. She is packing for her trip. Are you going to lunch? I ask. No. She is meeting her friends for lunch, then the boat trip. I tell her to have a great time. And I head down the hill to the comedor. Great lunch today. Chicken soup, chicken fried rice with veggies and two fried slices of plantain, pineapple juice, and a fruit medley for dessert. I love this place!

I leave the cafeteria as soon as I am done eating to walk to see if the washer is empty, and no, it is not. I have lots of time to spare so I go to my room, flop down on my bed and read. In the dorm, I am reading Curse of the Giant Tortoise; at the house, I am reading Beak of the Finch. I am learning so much reading this book. Rosemary and Peter Grant, David Lack, Robert Bowman, all are writers of Galapagos classics.

It is time to go back to the Library, but I see Juan Carlos and Roberto packing. Hmm. Que pasa? They are going on the boat at 2 PM to Isabela! Yikes! I tell them that Lilith will be on that boat, too. I ask them to give me a full report on this island. Roberto says that there is a festival there this weekend, maybe for their Independencia. Ah-ha! Those guys are going for the par-tee. They might be back Sunday, definitely Monday. Have fun, gotta run. And I open the Library for 2 PM.

The afternoon grinds by. And by that I mean waiting for the Internet to load and finish the AMNH titles. There must be something that can be done about this, but I can only imagine that it would cost money.

So I put a note on the door and go and get the mail. There are 10 or 12 new journals, 3 of which are Nature. I alphabetize them and leave them on the other desk. I’m supposed to be cataloging. Around 4 PM, I see that George has sent me an email. I am so frustrated with the Internet because I can’t even reply to him without getting a ‘time out’ on the send.

I open IE instead of Firefox and use the HTML version of Gmail. I write, I am here but the Internet is slow, in the Subject line and send it. It actually goes through. E-yeow! It is 4 PM here, 6 PM at home. George decides to phone me. The phone rings, Hola Library! And it is George! We talk about stuff, my Mom, our daughter, our friends. It is great to hear his voice. He says the same about mine. I tell him that we shouldn’t talk more than a couple of minutes; these international calls are expensive. We say I love you I miss you and see ya, good bye. Again. Remarkable!

I close the Library and try that damn washing machine one more time. If it is still full, I will do my laundry tomorrow when I am back on the campus for breakfast and my Internet fix in the Library. But Lo and behold, it is empty. I tell Mari Cruz that I will hang around and do my laundry. She is hot and thirsty, so I head to the washer, she to the tienda. But I am hot too, and think to buy her a drink and spend some time with her. She is halfway down the hill talking to Toby and Zonni. They are talking directions to a restaurant. I say, What a day! And they agree. It was and is absolutely gorgeous today. No rain, just sun, sun, sun. Remarkable!

Mari breaks away from them and I ask her about the directions. She says that Toby and Zonni are meeting Michael (see above) for dinner and she has been invited too. Nice, I say. She says Yeah, and the Grants. I say, The Peter and Rosemary Grants? She says Yeah. OMG! These are the people who put Darwin’s finches on the evolution world map! They have been studying the finches on Daphne Major since 1973! Mari Cruz said that she saw them at the Research Station at lunch. What!? I tell her the next time she sees them to find me. I want to ask Peter if he brought the Library a copy of his just published book, but really I just want to meet the gurus.

We go to the tienda and I buy groceries and a drink for Mari. And we walk back to the dorm room. Mari doesn’t have a bike, but another volunteer, Annie, is also off this island for the weekend (is this beginning to get repetitious? My money is on Isabela, yours too?). And she said that Mari could borrow her bike if Mari watered her plants in exchange.

I say that I think I know where Annie lives, just behind the house where I am staying. I can see her 3rd floor apartment from the roof deck there. Mari does not want to walk to town and not have the correct house and who can blame her? She says Dario knows. She finds Dario and I check my laundry. It washed fine, but the water is all blue. Whoops! And I am not convinced of the spin cycle, right now it is just soaking, a bad sign. I am game to walk my bike into town while Dario walks his bike into town to show Mari where Annie’s house is. Then we three will all have bikes for the weekend. I figure the laundry might be okay, just let it run its course.

We head toward town at 6:15 PM, my usual time to be coming down from the roof deck to make and eat dinner at my “house.”  There are scores of people leaving the Station Beach and walking to town ahead of us. Every once and again, we can pass these folks, but we only end up behind another group.

We take the right, exactly as I would to go “home.” We take another right, my street. I say, I think that it is this house, pointing to a pinky orange colored 3 story building. And Dario says Yes, that’s it. I say Goodbye and that I hope Mari has fun tonight. I tell her if the Grants show up, tell Peter that your roommate is the Librarian, and did he bring his book to donate? She smiles and laughs. I hope that she does get to meet and eat dinner with the Grants, and I hope that she has the nerve to tell Peter what I just said.

When I get to the gate of the house, there is a chain drawn across it and I did not leave it this way when I left this morning. I freak because I don’t know exactly how to undo this chain. But then I remember trying to use the chain on the first night here and that I could not figure out how it worked. If you don’t pull it but push it, it unlocks. Lucky for me, it unlocks. I wonder who has been here and left the chain on the lock.

I pull the groceries out of the bike’s basket and bring them into the house and drop them. Daylight is a-wasting and I have to bike back to the Station and my laundry.  I turn the front porch light on, and I am racing the setting sun. As I bike, I think that if the laundry did spin, I will pack it into a plastic bag and bring it back to the house and hang it up to dry tomorrow.

I get to the dorm to see that the washer’s dial has finished its actions, but only the water has drained out, it never did spin. I take the soaking wet laundry out of the washer and bring it over to the clothesline. I fold them over the clothes line afraid to use clothespins for the weight of them. I will let them drip dry. It is getting darker by the minute so I go into my room and grab the flashlight, to be used as a headlight if I need it, and I spray my legs, arms and head with bug spray. I bike back to the house as fast as my little legs can pump me. I look longingly at the launderer as I bike past and think that I will not be doing my laundry at the dorms anymore. In fact, I might even bring the laundry I just washed to this laundry tomorrow!! Is that remarkable? Probably not, more like stupidity.

I get home to the lighted porch and did not have to use my flashlight as a headlight to see my way there. I am very hot and sweaty, truly wanting a cold drink. I go to wash my hands and the water that I turned off this morning needs to be turned on. I trek up to the roof and dial the water, I go downstairs and wash my hands. I make a peach juice with extra water and ice. It tastes great. I eat my bran cereal with extra raisins and milk, and it tastes great, too. I take a cold shower, the only kind they have here and it feels refreshing instead of awfully cold.

I am happy that I disguised my PC since I know that someone was either in the house or in the yard today. I’m thinking that Mandy and Mark have a housekeeper who comes on Mondays and Fridays, but I don’t know that for sure. If she came here today, it sure doesn’t look any different than when I left.

I pull out my PC and blog. I am happy to have had such A Remarkable Day!

Sunday, March 02, 2008

It is Sunday, and it is the Lenten season. Easter is a few weeks away and I haven’t found a church yet for service. I’d better get on it! Of course, I’m mostly hanging out with scientists and young students or volunteers (Do they go to church?). I’ll ask Paola.

I found out last night during my ‘nature’s call’ that we don’t have water again. And that the fan was left on all last night, which was probably a good thing. The humidity is very high and it is warm. The bed sheets last night as I covered up felt like they had been just washed and put on the bed. It’s that moist. And I found out that my computer never shut down! I opened the screen and shut it down. I looked at my watch with my flash light, it was 4:15 AM!

I remember just a little bit of my dream. I was sleeping here in this bed, but I awoke in a brightly lit, white tiled room. No bed, no nothin’. The white exit door had a little door in it at chest height. A voice called into me and I replied. I’m not sure if I was speaking English, and I’m not sure whose voice it was, but in my dream it was a very real place, not dreamlike at all. I was pretty scared and I thought that if I go to sleep again, I will wake up in my dorm room. I must say that when I awoke at 6:30 AM, I was totally relieved to be in my dorm room in the Galapagos. Welcome to my wine enhanced nightmare! (Of course, it could have been the food I ate!!)

I dress and walk to the bathroom. No water still. Not having water is really frustrating! I walk to the Library get my remaining two jugs of dehumidifier water, and bring them to the women’s bathroom. I wash my face and hands and use up one gallon. I leave the other water for anyone else to use. In a few hours, I will get another gallon from emptying the dehumidifier again.

At least I have a clean face and hands. I decide to eat breakfast. It being Sunday, I have cereal. The kitchen had another flood last night but it was from the rain last night pouring under the screen door. The kitchen leaves a lot to be desired, to put it mildly. From my room I bring the milk I bought yesterday, cereal, raisins, water, spoon, and my red plastic glass. In the kitchen, I get a bowl and my juice from the fridge. This will be a feast! I prep at the big table and stand and eat. And, so do the mosquitoes! I slap and kill 3 or 4 on my legs and ankles before I can finish my cereal and get the heck out this place! Mari always puts on insect repellant to go into the kitchen. Maybe she is right.

I go back to my room, make my bed, and fire up the laptop to charge the battery. I write this part of today’s entry. As I write, nature calls again, and this time, it’s more like going to the outhouse, esp. because there is no water to flush with. I take it upon myself to use up the whole gallon of dehumidifier water to fill the toilet tank and flush it as best as can be accomplished. Not very pretty. But now that I have figured out that there is hot water in the showers, I can wash my hands in hot water, and that is great!

Now I think that I will write about stuff that I have observed, but so far haven’t written about. The birds. There is great bird life around the dorm and even without a rooster, one awakens to the sound of chirping, twitters and songs. The Yellow Warbler has by far the sweetest melody. The LGBs (Little Gray Birds, as my father in law did, and my husband now, calls them) are everywhere. Of course, these are Darwin’s Finches, mostly the Small Ground, Small Tree, and Warbler Finch. There are many Galápagos Mockingbirds, too. I have seen Smooth-billed Anis fighting in the shrubs out the back window of the dorm. I have even seen a Yellow-crowned Night Heron wandering around outside the lighted kitchen, eating Large Painted Locusts as they bang themselves against the screen door, are stunned and repelled, then eaten!

I wish that there were more of them eating the locusts. There are usually 4 or 5 locusts hopping and jumping around in the kitchen at night. If the outside or even inside light is on, they are right there under the illumination. If you open the door to in or out, then they jump in. You could spent an evening of just catching the ones in the kitchen and trying to get them back outside, just as another one will hop in and you are at it again. Trust me, I know this.

Around the dorm, there are lizards and an occasional gecko. The geckos in Puerto Ayora are transplants from Guayaquil (Phyllodactylus reissi). As I’ve written before, they are very cute! The lizards all scamper all over the place. You can be walking along and they are so well camouflaged that they can startle you! Those little imps! Sometimes I will see one with a shortened tail, sometimes I will see one where the tail has regenerated, but the color is more monotone. Fascinating little creatures.

The touristas. I probably have mentioned that my dorm is not very far from the Giant Tortoise pens. The Charles Darwin Research Station, and this area in particular, is on every cruise itinerary as a port of call. Everyone wants to see those big turtles and Lonesome George. Somehow the touristas think that they are alone and there is no one but themselves to chatter on with. These people amaze me. Hollering back and forth to one another at 7 AM on the path. Their noise usually wakes me up, if I am not up already.

I blog until it is lunch time. Then I bike into town for a meal at the kioskos. The soup is always hot, the meal nothing special, but it is good enough, for $3.50. Funny how during the week, I have dessert at lunch every day. Here there is no dessert, and I miss it!

I take my sweet time coming back to through town and remember to call my Mom. I speak to her at the Convalescent Hospital, now that she will answer the phone. I say, Hello Mother, this is your daughter. She can’t believe it, and says No it’s not. I say Yes it is, and we have a nice conversation.
She tells me she is doing fine, getting better all the time. I know this as everyone who sees her emails me. But I am happy to hear her voice, just as she must be to hear mine. I leave the phone booth happy and glad that I called.

I bike the rest of the way to the dorm on a contented high. Just plain old glad to have done something so simple as a phone call.

When I get back to the room, I tell Mari that I got to talk to my Mom and she sounded good and she is getting stronger every day and will be out of the hospital in two or three weeks. Amazing.

I play my Rise of Atlantis computer game until dinner. Which, of course, is cereal again. I read until lights out.

Saturday, March 1, 2008: First of March already!

Even though I went to sleep late last night, I am awake by 6:15 this morning. There is a telephone outside on the wall of our complex two doors down, and it just rings and rings. I have never answered it. It is frightening enough to have to answer the Library phone when it rings! Hola Library! Then either the person speaks English or starts to speak Spanish. I say, Habla inglés? And if they say No, then I have to say that I don’t speak Spanish. I’m sure that it is as frustrating for them as it is for me.

Anyway, this morning someone was persistent with their phone call and it did just ring and ring. Good thing I was awake! I try not to make too much noise as I want Mari to sleep. I have no idea what time they came back last night. I think it was 2:15 AM when I had my “nature call” to the ladies room last night and she still wasn’t back.

I grab all of the stuff I need for a shower, and head to the bathroom. Ah. No water! This is really getting old. So I scrap that idea, get dressed and head to the Library for an Internet connection and email reading and writing. At 8:50, I lock the Library and head for breakfast. Sam, the interpreter, is walking up the hill from the cafeteria pulling his suitcase through the dirt road. Just as I say Hello, you can’t be leaving already! The cook and waitress are being driven down to the cafeteria in a taxi to start breakfast. Sam turns around and we sit on the outside porch at the comedor and talk during our meal. He has been interpreting for some bigwigs who are trying to figure out how to keep more of the tourist cruise money in Ecuador, specifically the Galapagos. The cruise ships need to get a special permit at the cost of $20K, but it is a lifetime permit. Sam says that these boats make a half a million dollars a year easy. So this upfront lifetime permit doesn’t help the Galapagueños all that much over time. He was hired to interpret, and may be back again in the beginning of April, to help with more talks on this subject.

So this is how it works, you meet people staying here and they are either here for the long haul (over a year) or they are here for a week or so, and then gone. I like Sam esp. because his mother was a librarian in New York somewhere and retired to New Mexico and she is president of her town library’s friends group, and runs the annual book sale. Once a librarian, always a librarian.

We leave together and I go back to the Library. While I’m walking, I look at my watch. Holy smoke! I almost forgot that I ordered cerviche for today, to be delivered to Room 3 around 9:30. I walk up the path and someone asks me, Cerviche? I say Yes. He says, Talk to Bryan Milstead. I’m confused but say Okay. I find Bryan and yes, he is about to go get the cerviche. He asks where I want it delivered and I say How about the Library? He is good with that and I go to the Library. I email a few friends, read most of my ECSU mail and I hear a noise outside the door. I figure that it is Bryan and he is having difficulty with his bike or something. I open the door, and there is a very big Marine Iguana trying to figure out how to get out of the foyer of the library. I quickly go inside and grab my camera. When I walk out the door, that spooks him and he hustles through the doorway and out. I go past him and try to take his picture in the doorway. Well, that’s not going to happen! I snap a couple pix and go back inside. Next sound that I hear outside is Bryan delivering the goods. I get a container of cerviche and a little bag of popcorn. Somehow these two foods go together down here because it is not the first time I have had them in combination.

As I walk up to the dorm, I see Mari with a group going off to town. I ask if we have water yet, and she says No. I told her that I tried to be quiet this morning and wanted to take a shower, but there was no water. She says that if I just wanted to take a hot shower, there is water. Duh! It never occurred to me that the hot water is from the solar tank, and the tap water is pumped from the station! I file that into my brain, and go to put my cerviche in the refrigerator, the popcorn in my room.

I head back to the Library for more online stuff. I am researching (still) Galapagos cruises for George and I to take when he gets here. I get an email from my cousin and we write back and forth about my Mother and her recovery from her surgery.

I know that breakfast is later on Saturdays, and I am thinking so is lunch. At 1:30, I head to the comedor, only to find out that I am too late, and it is closed. Drats! I have the cerviche, maybe I will eat that. I go to the room and Mari is there getting ready with the rest of the volunteers to go to the Tortuga Bay Beach for the afternoon, Do you want to come? I say No. I want to bike to town, shop and call my Mother. There are businesses in town that have just Internet, and others that are just phone booths. It’s pretty weird but I guess that it makes sense because I need to make an international call.

Mari suggests that I go out to lunch too while I am in town. She is right. I will go to town to eat lunch, shop, and then call my Mom. I grab some cash and head out. It is an easy bike ride to the kioskos and I park my bike on the street and head into one that I have eaten at before and it has pollo on the menu. Good thing. I go to sit outside under the roof, but the TV is turned to a soccer game (and they get good reception) so I sit inside at a table with a good view of the TV and near enough to the door so if there is a breeze I will catch it. The soup is very hot. Perfecto! The chicken comes plated with 2 heaps of rice and a salad which consists of two big slices of cooked potato sitting on two pieces of lettuce, two pieces of tomato, a teeny slice of hard boiled egg all with a peanut sauce on top. This place kills me, rice with potatoes! Whew!

I pull a bottle of water from their refrigerated case and the waiter gives me a glass of juice which I forgot comes with my meal. The juice is red and sweet, maybe strawberry? Anyway, it has ice cubes in it and I am not afraid to have a drink with ice. Hopefully my stomach has “gone native” by now, otherwise, I guess I will find out the hard way! I take my time eating and watch the game. Then I pay and I am off to the big supermercado. I find some 50% less fat milk to buy and a set of cookware to bring as a gift to the housewarming party I have been invited to tonight. I leave there and start biking home. I pass one telephone booth establishment and it is cerrado. It isn’t that late in the day for this to be closed. I am a little upset that I can’t call my Mom. I will try again tomorrow morning to see if any phone booth stores are open.

I bike home. I arrive and I am all alone. Everyone is still at the beach. I have an hour before I need to get ready, and you know what that means: back to the Library for email. On my way there I meet a woman who I have met before and she says to me I wonder if the Library is open. I say I think so. She’d like to read her email. We turn the corner to the Library’s walkway and she says, No the Library is closed. I say, No it’s not, I’m about to open it (and read my email). I’m the Librarian. She says, You’re the Librarian? I say Yeah. We go inside where it is cool and she sets up her laptop and we talk a little bit. Her name is Sarah H., and she is studying Darwin’s Medium Ground Finch, grew up in Ohio, went to UMass-Amherst for school, and lives in Virginia now. She reads and I read and she leaves and I leave.

Back at the dorms, we have water now, Hooray! And I was going to shower anyway, so I do.

I wear a skirt, my Librarian Tee-shirt, earrings, and my new necklace. This is a party after all! I think that I have this great gift for Mandy and Mark, but nothing for little Molly. I grab the box of cookies from Poland and start to walk back to town. On my way there, I pass two “gift” shops, and I see little ceramic turtles, lizards, etc. How much? Two dollars. I thank them and move to the next shop. I look inside and find a big sticker, How much? Two dollars. As I walk out of the store, I see bracelets with elastic string. How much? One dollar. Perfecto. I buy a little fake pearl bracelet for Molly, and I am walking again. When I turn the corner, I see Dennis Geist 100 feet or so in front of me walking to the party too. When he turns to see if he can cross the street, he sees me and I wave. Are you going to Mark’s party? Yes. He waits until I catch up. We cut through the park on the corner and Lo and behold, there is Paola and her daughter on the basketball court. I say Hello and introduce Paola to Dennis. She asks me how I am doing in the Library and I say fine. What about the book that the woman in San Cristobal wanted. I found it and it was in the Archive. Everything is okay. Don’t worry. Email me any time if I have a question. I will.

Dennis asks me if the Library is open tomorrow. I say it can be if you want it to be. He says that the office he was in got gutted for a retrofit of some kind and he doesn’t have Internet access. I say What time do you want to meet? He says 9 AM, and I say Fine, I’ll be there.

He figures out which house it is and we go in. We aren’t late, but we aren’t early either. There are a ton of little kids, and I find Molly. She is the first one I give a present to. Her eyes light up. I know I did the right thing. Then I give Mandy the cookware gift. She seems happy to have it. I tell her that it is small, and she can use them as serving dishes. She says that’s fine. She needs small. Then I put the box of Polish cookies on the table.

I find the wine and a glass and I roam around the house. It is very modern in its own way. This is the house where I will house sit and I will get pictures of it in a week. It has a fabulous covered 3rd floor balcony where you can see out to the Bay, and there is a hammock there too. I know where I will be! Can’t wait to try it up there in a rainstorm too.

I meet a few people and talk to a very nice older German woman, the mother in law of the BIOMAR guy. I have another glass of wine and eat some fruit salad and peanut and raisins. I am beat, and tell Mandy that I am headed home.

I walk home in the dark that isn’t so dark again. Freddy bikes by saying Hola Kris! And he is gone. I get to the room and Mari has just finished her shower and had a good day at the beach.

I sit and we talk a little. She asks how my phone call went, and I had to say that I didn’t make it. I almost can’t face writing my blog tonight, but I get up and start writing. It’s 10 PM and Mari has to work tomorrow, poor kid! I’m calling it a day.