Day 6: Teenage girls, or the hunt continues

Well Paul, you were right.  It's been only 6 days in South America and I haven't been able to avoid it any longer.  It's Saturday night, and I'm doing cocaine.

Ok, bad joke.  But it is pretty good.

I taught an intermediate English class this morning at 8:30 am in Providencia.  The entire class was 7 girls between the ages of 11 and 15.  Yeah... it was weird.  The youngest one in the class also asked me a bunch of questions about grammar forms like future tense vs present continuous, etc.  I answered the best I could, but there was a voice in the back of my head screaming "fraud!" the entire time.  It was an uncomfortable 3 hours.

After that I received a call from one of the landlords I had emailed about a potential place.  She responded by sending me an email and drawing up an entire map for me to follow once I reached the metro stop.

You probably assumed that the top of the map was aligned to the north, didn't you?  Oh ho, YOU FOOL.

Well, I did as well.  And after I wandered through the wrong side of the tracks (literally) for about 20 mins, I called the lady asking where her apartment was.  She responded in broken English, then said "red shoes? I see you! Stay there."  So I stayed in place for another 15 minutes, except she never came.  I called her back and told her that I couldn't find it, and I was just going to head home.  She told me she'd meet me at the metro station.  I waited another 10 minutes, and finally she met me at the metro station, where we walked back to her place.  I looked around for what felt like an appropriate amount of time, then left. It was much too far out of the way, and I would have been sharing a bathroom with her and her husband, who recently had two hip replacements ("caderas nuevas").

I stopped at their megamall on the way back (think Cambridgeside/Ridgedale/Briarwood, but bigger) and marveled at the enormous line of people waiting to get an Apple laptop.  It must have been 1000 strong.  After wandering through for a while, I ate in their food court while watching old guys play clocked chess for a while.  The food court also had huge windows with a surreal view of the Andes Mountain range outside.  Next time I'll bring my camera.  Also, down here they sell ice cream at KFC.  I hear it tastes like frog legs.

So while I have it, here are some pictures of the hostel I'm living in.  It's not much, but it's...well, it's not much.

My living quarters for the past couple days.  Don't tell anybody, but I've pretty much been wearing the same 3 sets of clothes since I got here.  I need an apartment.

 The sign above the toilet says "please don't flush toilet paper, use the waste basket".  Awesome.

 I've mastered the art of the "upper body only" shower.  You get hot water 2 out of every 3 tries.  Not bad, right?

 This is the only way I don't look like the whitest guy around.

The world's worst pool table (9 foot).  Adam will appreciate this shot.  I play one game a night, it usually takes me about 20 minutes, and I almost break my stick over my leg 3-4 times a game.

That's all for now.