Friday, March 15th, 2013

How nice, Dylan made me pancakes for breakfast.  They needed to be cooked a little more on the inside but I’m afraid if he did they would be burned on the outside.

2 ladies were sitting outside next to the apartment.  From what I understood they were interested in renting one of the new apartments.  When Reina got up I told her about them.  They were still here and Reina said they were here to clean the new apartments.

I still haven’t recovered from getting up so early yesterday, a light headache, so I went back to bed about 9:30, slept until 11 and got up at 11:30.  

Reina is heading downtown to give the watch to her friend, meet her mother and get a free shampoo from a friend.

It’s 5:30 and Reina buzzes me from the front door.  She needs 8mil to pay the taxi driver.  All I have left is 50mil and luckily the driver has change.  She brings in a new HP Windows 8 laptop (notebook?) computer.  She tells me it cost $300 in a promotion at Exito where they only had 2 available and she was first in a long line.  She tells me she sold an old computer and used the money to buy this one; and it came with a free backpack carrying case.  Hmmm?  Anyway, I have heard that Windows 8 is very different from Windows 7 and I’m glad the instructions aren’t in Spanish because I won’t be able to help.  However, Dylan, being an 18 year old kid, can probably play with it and figure it out.

Regarding traffic

The streets are filled with trucks, buses, taxis and motorcycles, not to mention pedestrians crossing the street at any time and place.  They all drive very aggressively often coming within inches of each other.  Motorcycles drive between cars, on the shoulder or next to the median.  At a stoplight it is an opportunity for all the motorcycles to move to the front of the line and they even drive between stopped cars to do it.  But somehow there is some unwritten rule they all follow as I have yet to see an accident and it is probably the most efficient way to move a large number of vehicles around town as quickly as possible.  Bus drivers are especially aggressive.  As soon as the last person puts their foot on the step of the bus to get on or off the driver steps on the gas.  The cost to ride a bus is 1,600 or 1700 pesos which is almost $1 and the driver makes change while he is driving.  He changes lanes anywhere he finds an opening.  It is common for him to move from the rightmost lane of a 4 lane road to the leftmost lane and back again all within a block or so.  And at red lights, as soon as the light turns green, at least one vehicle immediately honks their horn.