Day in the Life

Sunday 30 October 2011, 9:30pm

A Boring Day

I wake up whenever I wake up, usually around 7:30am. I might work out, I might watch an episode of 30 Rock (or How I Met Your Mother or Breaking Bad). I might do both. I eat breakfast—oatmeal or bread with some kind of topping, coffee. Meanwhile I leave a large pot of water heating on the stove so that after breakfast, I can take a bath. Everything useful to do gets canceled or was never scheduled in the first place, so I check my email at the library (for 2 hours) and harass Katherine while she is at work. I would call Greg to pass the time until lunch, but he is in America (L) so I watch more 30 Rock instead. Lunch. A nap. 30 Rock. A walk to buy fruit for dinner. I try to get through another chapter of Feast for Crows, but dear God does it pale in comparison to the last book, and I can't call Greg again. Instead I go for an aimless walk and then memorize all of the lyrics to "Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying" by Belle & Sebastian, and journal about how on the 10^th listen, I picked up on how it is actually a very uplifting song. "And then, with a winning smile, the boy/ with naivety succeeds!" I might do some yoga. I start to blog but don't have anything interesting to say. Sleep.

This day has sadly happened many times over, with slight variation (for example, when Greg was still here, I would probably call him 3 times) but less and less so as my work with the Comité de Limpieza Pública (Sanitation Committee) in San Jose picks up.

A Day Bursting With… Waiting

I wake up at 6:30 so I have enough time to work out, breakfast and bathe before my 9am meeting at the Municipality, but hit the snooze button a few times so that I don't have time to work out. Except then I finish everything else by 8:30 and end up waiting around until 8:55 when I can leave for the Municipality without being early. Should I have slept longer or worked out for 25 minutes? I probably should have done both, because the taller on rellenos sanitarios that I was supposed to attend doesn't start until 10. Of course, I really only attended so that I could talk more with the consultant who is doing the garbage diagnostic for the entire province and more concretely worm myself into the project, but afterwards he has to rush off to another meeting.

After lunch, all I have to do is 1) make copies of the survey I need for Sunday, and 2) have someone proofread the invitation I designed for the street cleaning campaign, before making copies of that as well. But after an hour, neither is completed and I'm panicking because it is 3pm on a Friday and people are already starting to leave. Why is it that I am working with the only people in the Municipality who ever seem to be really busy?? After two hours, I have my surveys copied, but only because I twice interrupted Adolfo's meeting with a disgruntled sanitation worker and he sent me across the street to put them on the Municipality's account at the libreria (their own machine was being a brat). After three hours, I am the only one left in the office when Barrantes finally comes back to proofread the invitation. He wants to change the entire thing. He swears that even though Monday and Tuesday are holidays (Day of the Dead), he will fix it himself and have the copies made by Tuesday night so that I can deliver them to the colegio on Wednesday morning (the cleaning is scheduled for Thursday so…). Praying for this to actually happen takes the form of a movie on my laptop, a chicken sandwich con todas las cremas, and an early bedtime.

Hurry up and wait—this was just last Friday, but I have had a lot of similar days in the past, too.

I still do not know if my invitations are finished…. Guess I have to wait until Monday!

A Surprisingly Successful Diagnostic Day

Sunday, the day I finally got my trash diagnostic surveys in San Jose completed, was actually pretty great. The Comité de Limpieza Pública (Sanitation Committee) had found me six girls around 17-20 years old who volunteered to do the survey with me, and I had already met with them to go over the questions.

I leave my house at 7:30am to be in San Jose by 8:00, and they were all there by 8:30 (close enough!), wearing the ridiculous neon orange jerseys Barrantes (my socio at the Municipality for this project) picked out to identify them as part of the committee. In three teams of two, plus me, we finish almost all of the 100 surveys by the time we meet up again at 12:30. Success! The girls decide that they would rather finish the remaining surveys before breaking for lunch—I stay behind to read over the ones they have already done in case I have questions about their handwriting. I am thrilled to find that my team of jovenas has done an excellent job answering all of the questions, and based on the number of "No sé"s written next to the question about what diseases can be caused by burning trash, they did not give people answers. They listened to me when I told them not to! The ensalada on the plate: I am invitar'd to some surprisingly delicious potatoes with rice and lots of literal salad on top, so I don't have to buy lunch!

I'm home by 2:00 and spend the next hour doing laundry (including those absurd jerseys, since I feel bad already about how much work Rosalía is already doing without compensation—they make the clothes line on my roof GLOW!). I'm in a good mood, so I don't really notice I'm tired until after I've talked to my neighbor for an hour about what I'm working on and heard his opinion on everything from development work to oil made from some kind of nut in the jungle that cures allergies, and my Spanish starts to majorly suffer because, man, I've had a long day in the sun. I celebrate with a bath and by buying Edam pre-sliced cheese (it's a treat because it costs 3 soles, mantequeso only costs 1 but isn't as… cheese-like). Mom calls me from America, and then I eat mini cheese and tomato sandwiches--it is probably good that I didn't have any basil or they would have been too amazing for me to handle after such a great day.

(Actually I really wish I had remembered to get basil…)

And now here I am blogging, glad that I can wrap this blog post up with a good day after its rather dim beginning. Sweet dreams!