Shortly after posting last night, I went downstairs to the kitchen to fill up my glass with water before heading to bed. Normally I just fumble around in the dark, but yesterday afternoon my host dad showed me where the kitchen light switch was so last night I was able to see what I was doing while I poured the water. And what I saw was the visage of my sworn enemy, my one true fear: las cucarachas. Two of them, running around on the stovetop, bigger than the ones in Wisconsin and redder in color. Tonight, when I go down for water, if I must, I will leave the lights off, as before. Something are better left unknown.
After my morning Spanish class, I ate some incredible empanadas and caught up with a friend on the phone. They (kindly) called me out for not talking to enough strangers here, prompting me to try something I swore I would never do: use Tinder to try to make friends. I want to get better at Spanish and recognize that this requires me to talk to more people, but I’m also pretty uncomfortable chatting up strangers in English, let alone a second language. Here, Tinder actually feels like a bit less pressure, because the people you match with ostensibly want to talk to you. We’ll see how it goes.
In the evening I ate some fried chicken and had a peach-flavored soda that was good, but didn’t really taste like peaches. Then, feeling bold, I explored the city for a while, without getting lost. It was pretty cool of me.
Tomorrow evening there’s a meeting on the upcoming school year, and after that I’ll be able to start planning curriculum, which should keep me nice and busy. In the meantime, I’m going to try to catch a bus over to the city of Tuxtla to check out their zoo. Perhaps I’ll liberate a spider monkey and bring it back to the meeting with me.
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