A Frustrating Day in the Life
8am: arrive at municipality office expecting the library committee to be there to help me with cataloging books. Nobody is there. The librarian assumed I’d remind everybody the day before; however, the day before I was in the next town over buying HER birthday cake. I suggest she come with me to the committee members’ houses to invite them. She declines. I get mad.
8:15: arrive at committee member’s house, which is literally 20 steps away from the municipality. He says he will do todo lo posible (everything possible) to help out. This, in Honduran speak, means he will not come. I get mad again.
8:30: Antonio, a guy with whom I worked on a proposal, asks me to print out the proposal to send to an NGO. I spend 78 lempiras (almost 4 bucks) of my own money printing it out, and bring it right over.
9:00: Antonio comes back to me and tells me to print it out again, it was missing something. We’d gone over this proposal the night before and he’d said nothing; now he wants me to change a part and print it all over again. I tell him to do it himself. Again, I’m a bit mad.
12:00 Get home to make lunch, and there’s no water. Hmm.
12:30 While working in the living room with the TV on, hordes of children peek through my windows to see all the stuff in my room. I yell “BOO!!” and scare them away
1:15 My neighbor strolls onto my front porch and starts ripping out cilantro from my flower bed. I yell “go right ahead!!” and she gets embarrassed and walks away. Sure she’s too embarrassed to ask me, but she has no pena about helping herself and ripping out all the cilantro I have. Ahhhhhh!!!!!
1:25 A woman peeks through my window at the TV set and yells “Having fun, aren’t you?” I scream. She wanders over to the front porch and stares at the TV. I wonder what to do. I try to talk to her but she’s fixated on the TV. I turn off the TV. She goes away. I wonder why I agreed to live here.
2:00 I make Irish bread with my friend at the neighbor’s house. We chat in the backyard amid a menagerie of barnyard animals.
4:00 arrive back at the house and there are literally 12 children on my porch waiting for me. They want to play Monopoly and draw and possibly eat all my food and drink all my juice. I tell them “not today, kids.” They leave.
4:25 I work on library stuff at my house. I look out the window and there’s a library committee member washing his car. I quietly grumble to myself.
5:00 I visit the old host family. The old host mom feeds me coffee and tamales and puts me to work in the pulpería downstairs. I sell people beans and corn and hot dogs but I don’t know any of the prices. People are amused.
6:00 I get home and go outside to take my clothes from the line, and see a mess of broken plastic shards all over the lawn. It seems the neighbors cleaned house, by throwing all their junk over the wall into my yard. I guess they thought I wouldn’t mind??
6:30 I hear the soft ping of rocks thrown at my window. I open the curtain and there’s a little boy just standing there, assuming I wasn’t home (even though the lights were all on. Idiot!) He gets embarrassed and says “Excuse me” and runs away.
6:45 my neighbor comes to visit. I tell her all about my ridiculous day. She laughs and laughs.
8:15: arrive at committee member’s house, which is literally 20 steps away from the municipality. He says he will do todo lo posible (everything possible) to help out. This, in Honduran speak, means he will not come. I get mad again.
8:30: Antonio, a guy with whom I worked on a proposal, asks me to print out the proposal to send to an NGO. I spend 78 lempiras (almost 4 bucks) of my own money printing it out, and bring it right over.
9:00: Antonio comes back to me and tells me to print it out again, it was missing something. We’d gone over this proposal the night before and he’d said nothing; now he wants me to change a part and print it all over again. I tell him to do it himself. Again, I’m a bit mad.
12:00 Get home to make lunch, and there’s no water. Hmm.
12:30 While working in the living room with the TV on, hordes of children peek through my windows to see all the stuff in my room. I yell “BOO!!” and scare them away
1:15 My neighbor strolls onto my front porch and starts ripping out cilantro from my flower bed. I yell “go right ahead!!” and she gets embarrassed and walks away. Sure she’s too embarrassed to ask me, but she has no pena about helping herself and ripping out all the cilantro I have. Ahhhhhh!!!!!
1:25 A woman peeks through my window at the TV set and yells “Having fun, aren’t you?” I scream. She wanders over to the front porch and stares at the TV. I wonder what to do. I try to talk to her but she’s fixated on the TV. I turn off the TV. She goes away. I wonder why I agreed to live here.
2:00 I make Irish bread with my friend at the neighbor’s house. We chat in the backyard amid a menagerie of barnyard animals.
4:00 arrive back at the house and there are literally 12 children on my porch waiting for me. They want to play Monopoly and draw and possibly eat all my food and drink all my juice. I tell them “not today, kids.” They leave.
4:25 I work on library stuff at my house. I look out the window and there’s a library committee member washing his car. I quietly grumble to myself.
5:00 I visit the old host family. The old host mom feeds me coffee and tamales and puts me to work in the pulpería downstairs. I sell people beans and corn and hot dogs but I don’t know any of the prices. People are amused.
6:00 I get home and go outside to take my clothes from the line, and see a mess of broken plastic shards all over the lawn. It seems the neighbors cleaned house, by throwing all their junk over the wall into my yard. I guess they thought I wouldn’t mind??
6:30 I hear the soft ping of rocks thrown at my window. I open the curtain and there’s a little boy just standing there, assuming I wasn’t home (even though the lights were all on. Idiot!) He gets embarrassed and says “Excuse me” and runs away.
6:45 my neighbor comes to visit. I tell her all about my ridiculous day. She laughs and laughs.
posted by Maureen at 4:08 PM
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