Back to Reality

Things here are settling back down a bit after the craziness of having so many new people in the house this past weekend. Two of the three English girls left for their projects in the jungle, so it´s now just me, Pablo, and a new girl named Carla who´s going to be here until January.

It´s actually kind of nice to be the source of knowledge for once. I never thought that I would be helping other people with Spanish! It´s also nice to be able to show someone around and show them the ropes and the little ins and outs of this wierd city. I kind of wish that I had had someone here to do that for me when I arrived. Though, then again, it was kind of nice to just explore on my own and figure everything out through trial and error.

I´ve got a long run today, about 14 miles. Hopefully it´ll go all right. Jon has told me to take it real easy, never strain the pace, since I´m thinking about racing this weekend. There´s a 5k on Saturday morning in the park, and it´s for charity, so I figured I`d give it a shot. I would usually be doing another speed workout anyways, so this just takes the place of that. I have no idea what kind of pace I´ll shoot for. Jon gave me some numbers but they sounded awful fast. Oh well, I haven´t raced in like three months anyways, so it´ll be good just to have a break from training.

The only bummer is that this race is pretty early in the morning (I think the gun is at 8:00am), which means I´m going to have to get up around 5:00am. I´ve been getting up around 7:00 though, naturally, so this shouldn´t be too bad. Also, early in the morning its usually not too hot and not too rainy (knock knock knock).

On an unrelated note, I´m really pissed off at the American embassy right now. So, yesterday, I was going to turn in my absentee ballot at the US embassy (it said on the ballot that you could turn them in there and not have to pay postage). Anyways, Maria said that the embassy was quite near my work, which it seemed to be when I looked it up online. So, after work, I hitched a cab, since I didn´t know exactly where it was and I was trying to give my legs a bit of rest.

Well, I got there and the place was all boarded up and there was a sign saying that the embassy had moved to a new address that I didn´t recognize. So, I hailed another cab and figured it would be somewhere relatively close. Oh no. It turned out the new embassy was just about as far away as you could be and still be in the city limits. By the time I got there, I had about 50 cents left to get back (the cab ride there cost about $4.00). I also realized that I didn´t have any sort of ID which I figured I might need to enter the embassy. I was already feeling pretty downtrodden.

I finally got to the front of the line and asked the guard about absentee ballots. He said that the person who deals with all voting issues doesn´t get in until 2:00. It was now about 12:00. So, I said ¨forget it,¨ and hopped a bus. Luckily, the buses are only 25 cents, so I was all right in that department. I didn´t really know where the bus would take me, so as soon as I recognized the downtown area, I just hopped off. It was still about a 45 minute walk back to my house. Oh, and I had forgotten my lunch and water! Pobre mio...

But other than that, it´s been pretty good here. I ended up just taking my ballot to the post office and mailing it for less than the cab cost anyways. Joy... Also, apparently one of my friend´s mother said that absentees´ votes on proposition questions don´t count. This seems mighty strange, can anyone verify? Well, either way, Vote YES on 2!