rain rain

I'm getting used to this routine. Wake up at 7am, breakfast while waiting for the water to heat up, shower, ride bike (quickly) down early and almost empty streets to la casa del pan..get out piña, papaya, and zanahoria and usually limones and manzanas too...turn on music...spend the day making coffee, tea and juice, and answering questions and translating..3:30 always comes much sooner than I expect. And considering that I am at the restaurant 6 days a week, you would think I would be in a hurry to leap back onto my bicycle (well, it's borrowed) and fly home, down and up and past the strange lighthouse-looking building that is so far from any sea. Instead I like to linger in the shop and smell and touch all the neat organic products. Today I am waiting for the rain to making bike-riding home appealing.

I met a gal from Michigan, which was nice in a sort of unidentifiable way. Sure I've got some roots and attachments there, but is finding someone from your land of birth in a farther-away land really a cause for celebration? Either way I got her phone number because she works at Promedios and I would like to learn about film editing if I can. I want to learn just about all I can, in fact, while I have what for now I will call a "brief separation from reality." Meaning, I am living how I want without others telling me how to use my time (i.e. bosses, professors, the president) and I am not-so-quietly pleased about it.

In fact, maybe on my day off tomorrow I will stroll downtown and shout about my absolute pleasure with life. Probably not (gringos draw enough attention eh?) but I'm happy, something that is seemingly criminal when one doesn't succumb to the confines of a capitalistic, elitist, hierarchical power structure. So, call me a criminal.

just like spring......

The weather in San Cristobal is warming, slowly but surely. Spring is identifiable in the sudden and brief sicknesses of several people that I know and in the alternating brightness and stormy rains of the days.

Despite all changes and newness, I have myself wrapped up in a tranquil and steady life, which involves work, puppy, roommates, books, and the occasional film. Excitement comes in the form of Tuesday 2 for 1 sushi day and Samba's ever-rounder belly, or the occasional bottle of caña.

I like my new work. It's quiet but with enough unpredictability to make each day worth getting up at 7am. I like making carrot juices for people who display such open eagerness when they ask for one. I also like the staff breakfast that we all get around 11am and which is always a complete surprise. There are nice little surprises too, like today when a woman came to drop off a granola sample for the restaurant owners and she gave me my own little bag to try too. A little later an older woman asked me if it would be safe for her to take a taxi after dark in San Cristobal and I assured her completely that it was.

It's nice. And home is also nice too. My roommates are becoming quite dear to me and I much prefer staying at home to going out these days, a sentiment we all seem to share.

It feels very good to just wake up every morning, breathe and smile all day long, and fall into a warm bed at night. Sooner or later I'll get restless but for now, it's just what I could want.