Friday, March 8th, 2013

Today is International Women’s Day.  I don’t have extra money to buy Reina flowers or candy.  I know next month I’m going to be much more careful.  No more promises about what we will buy next month; at least for expensive things.  I can promise we will buy fans but I’m not going to promise we’ll buy a television or a washer/dryer, for example.  I want to have money left to go to a restaurant occasionally.  I want to explore the city.

Garbage men came around at 8:30 this morning.

About 10:30 we took the bus downtown where Reina got her cellphone fixed - again.  We bought a chocolate cake that looked like a little log for the ladies at her house; mother, grandmother, and sisters.  At her mother’s house she gave us a nice lunch of salad, homemade potato chips, rice, meat (beef), juice and a slice of chocolate cake for dessert.  This was the chewiest meat I’ve had in a long time.  I spit out the first piece because I couldn’t stop chewing it.  After that I just cut the meat into smaller pieces and chewed it as much as I could and then swallowed.

Reina’s sister loaned us 350 mil: 150 mil will be to pay Alex for the ride to and from the airport, the other 200 mil will be for taxis and dinner tonight with some left over for tomorrow to get downtown.  Just learned I have to pay 10% interest for a month whenever I borrow money from her sister.  This is the last month we’re going to be doing that!  From now on we only make large purchases at the end of the month when we know how much extra money we have.

After that I lay down on Reina’s bed and took a 1 hour nap. On the way back home I saw my first fire truck.  Looked and sounded just like in the States.  It seemed like the vehicles were trying to get out of its way.  Also saw a juggler on a unicycle so high I don’t know how he got up there or how he’s going to get down or how he collected money from the drivers he was entertaining.

Jesus came over about 4:30 and put the bed together.  (I understand he will finish staining it after my brother leaves.) 

We went to her aunt’s house about 5:30 and about 6pm Alex drove us to the airport.  Alex charged us 150 mil for the trip.

After we got his things into his room we went to El Corral for dinner.  I don’t think we’ll eat there too much more.  It costs about $40 for burgers for the 3 of us.  And then Dilan called and he didn’t have money for the bus or taxi so he took the taxi to us and we paid for it and then paid for dinner for him.