Thursday, March 10th, 2016

I only heard one dog bark for a short time this morning so our locking the dogs away at night seems to be working.

We left the finca at 12:55, I gave the black dog 2 dog biscuits and there was no wait for a bus (Fredonia) but soon it was waiting in a long line of traffic.  The bus driver said something and got out and walked toward the front of the line.  Teresa got out and I followed her.  She exchanged words with the driver as he walked back and I followed her back onto the bus.  At the triangle everyone got off and we got on a Fredonia bus in front of us.

I asked Teresa for some more information about her facial injections and learned that she will have them for 3 more months and then only once every 3 months after that.

At Carbón de Leña Teresa ordered fish and mazamorra and I ordered their chicken shishkebab and a Mr. Tea.  Laura arrived a few minutes later and she just had a mango juice.

I’ve been collecting information on Mr. Tea and Coke/Pepsi to see which one is healthier.  I learned a 600ml bottle of Coke/Pepsi contains 63grams of sugar and 40mg of sodium.  A 300ml bottle of Mr. Tea contains 22 grams of sugar and 40mg of sodium.  So, as long as I stay with a single bottle, Mr. Tea is healthier with 43 less grams of sugar.

On my way to the pharmacy it started raining lightly.  I picked up my Tamsulosin for the month – the price went up from 41,500 to 42,900 – and returned to the restaurant slightly damp.  At least the rain keeps the heat down so I don’t mind.

Laura told me something about her wanting to go to the US in August to be an au pair.  I told her she’s an adult so why is she asking me?  I understand I would pay some fee and she would pay me back.  I asked if she knew of a family she would be with and she said an agency in Medellin would arrange that.  I told her I would need to speak to someone in the agency – in English.  I also told her that her English would have to be much better for an American family to accept her and she told me she believes her English would be sufficiently better by August.

I paid 36,500 (about $11) for our lunch.

We went over to Citibank where I made a cash withdrawal then we went next door where I paid 342,000 pesos for Laura’s English lessons for next month. 

 

We stopped at Exito where we picked up some needed food items but I still couldn’t find a jar of sliced dill pickles.  Teresa paid with her monthly food budget but I believe she also used some accumulated Exito points.  She asked for my cedula number but when the cashier entered it someone else’s name popped up.  We went to customer service and after the lady did a search I was told that in the future I should give them the number ‘300’ before my cedula number.

We took a taxi and dropped Laura off near her apartment building and we continued to the highway.  We were on a direct bus after about a 5 minute wait.  It was raining for most of our trip on the highway but by the time we got off the bus it had cleared a bit and was no longer raining.  There was an SUV sitting at the entrance to the sideroad and Teresa recognized the driver as Mario.  He drove us up to the top of the hill in his 4-wheel drive SUV.  I gave him the final 200mil payment for our share of repairing the sideroad.  I understand it’s supposed to be done on the 15^th of this month.

I gave the black dog 1 ½ dog biscuits on the way down and the other dog came out and I tossed it the other half. It was nice to get back to the finca without sweating although the finca was still stuffy.  It was 5:30 and we put Peluche and Luna in the doghouse.

I started watching the movie Contact (7.4) again.

We continued watching Self/Less.

T-shirt of the day: Dreams don’t work unless you do.