Thursday, 6pm: meeting with writing group
8:30pm: walk with group to “art auction” (private, at someone’s home), wine+mingling+Michael revealing yet another artistic talent—he plays the saxophone.
10pm: leave party with Rachel (from writing group) and her friend Martin and walk to our house to hang out on the roof for awhile. Very enjoyable to be hanging out with friends in a nonparty environment.
11pm: talk to roommates Tomik (Polish) and Robi (Hungarian) in the kitchen while they are making dinner. They’re a little drunk and so are we, so we’re all being a bit loud and silly. They invite us to eat with them, so we all eat outside and talk and drink some more. A nice way to end the evening.
1pm (I think): go to bed.
Friday, 2:30pm: Brandon and I venture to the locutorio (for printing and scanning needs) and it’s very disorganized and overwhelming. It is not obvious how to get anything done. We finally get on a computer and after awkwardness and some broken conversation with an employee, our things print. Overall, I’m frustrated in dealing with such a menial task being so difficult. Then we sit at the computer for awhile. I thought all our things were finished printing, so I began to get impatient, wondering why we were just sitting there. There must be some weird phenomenon where because of the language/culture barrier causing difficulties, people who normally communicate well are temporarily stripped of that skill, because Brandon and I were on different planets while we were in that locutorio. I didn’t understand why we would just sit there with our internet charges increasing, but really Brandon was waiting for his last document to print. My frustration translated into me taking on a very negative tone in my speech, asking questions, trying to figure out what the hell we were doing. And then we left before Brandon’s last document printed, and I had no idea this was the case until it was too late. I’m not sure why Brandon didn’t just tell me he was still waiting for something to print. I probably should have been nicer when I said “Why the hell are we sitting in this awful place? What are we still doing here?” so that maybe he would have felt more comfortable explaining to me that he was waiting for the printer. No such luck.
Now I’m so annoyed that instead of sitting on the terrace with Brandon drinking rum and cokes, I’m letting you all know how fucking awful it is to live in a developing country sometimes.
It’s a shame, because yesterday was so great.
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