Thursday, August 22nd, 2013

It started raining last night at 10:30 and was still raining when I fell asleep.

I went to bed at 11pm, woke up at 5:30 and got up at 7:30 feeling pretty good.

At 8:30 on the way to the corner store to buy milk I noticed Jhon in his office working with John David.  I spent 15-20 minutes with him practicing English by asking him questions about his recent flight to Risaralda, Colombia.  He didn’t do very well.  Jhon thinks he just lacks confidence.  Afterwards I told Jhon I’d send him my bill at the end of the month – he looked a little nervous – lol.

It took 3 tries this morning to score 90% on Grammar (Unit 3 Lesson 4).  Next was Writing (Unit 3 Lesson 3) and I only scored 29% so I’m sure it will take a few attempts to complete that one.

3 words I realize I haven’t learned yet: Comedor: living room; Enseño: teach; Estudia: study.

I tried calling Katherine, the interpreter; at the number she gave me in June of 2012.  I heard something in Spanish, 3 quick beeps and then silence.  I guess I might not be able to reach her if she has a new number.

Lunch was a regular small hot dog, a bag of potato chips and a large Pepsi for 10mil ($5.26) at Dogger.  While I was there eating my lunch I saw a man with a small dog at one of the ATMs nearby.  This dog, like many others do, was lying down on its stomach against the cool tile floor.  But when the man was done with his business he couldn’t get the dog to stand up.  He started dragging it on its stomach.  In the end he picked it up and carried it away.  Now who has trained who here?

In cutting through Exito I believe I discovered the changing room where you can try on clothes.  I then walked the 20 minutes to Dario apartment building and bought a bottle of water across the street just in case it should get hot in the afternoon.

Dario and I played 1 45 minute game.  I had black and he played his favorite opening.  I had an innovation I had showed him last time we played to exchange my bad bishop early on for his good bishop but he found a way to avoid the exchange this time.  At one point in the middle of the game I would have mated him, or gained his queen, if I had just switched the order of 2 of my moves.  As you can probably guess I ended up loosing the game.

After that I played a short game with one of his students named Carlos that has only been playing for a short time.  We kept taking back his moves where he was giving up pieces for free. 

Then I said goodbye and walked about 8 blocks south to Philly Steaks but they were closed.  I had to use the restroom so I walked about 2 blocks east and caught the next Circular 303 bus back to Exito. 

Dinner was a Whopper and small strawberry milkshake for 15,100.  As I was leaving Viva Mall I saw 2 men playing chess just outside the entrance.  I bought a kilo of strawberries for 3mil just in case Beatriz came over.  I walked over to Jhon’s office and asked him if he would like to go get a drink at the corner store.  Bob was there and we had a nice talk for a little while. 

Back at the apartment I cleaned the strawberries but Beatriz only stopped for a minute as she was with her daughter and they were walking their 2 dogs.

ALL THE STRAWBERRIES ARE MINE!

I ate 2/3 of them and saved the rest for breakfast.

I wrote up some instructions for the barber for my haircut tomorrow, translated it into Spanish, and copied it to an index card.