I slept in a different bed that night. Maria Elsa was very concerned because the school had messed up. Another new girl, Valerie, was placed at Maria Elsa's by mistake and ANOTHER new girl was coming in Monday night. That's too many rooms, even with Claudia's room. After talking to Imelda and Sandy they choose to put Imelda into Sandy's room for one night (there are two beds there). I didn't bring an alarm clock with me and my little, cheap, digital watch is difficult to figure out. I could have used either of my phones, but learned that my translator has a scheduler that has an alarm. It sounds like the old clock with the bells on top. It worked fine, though my brain was up already. |
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More campaign poster in Guatemala City. This year the big story is Sandra, the president's wife. Everyone here has only 4 years in office. The constitution disallows close family from running immediately afterwards. So Sandra divorced her husband to get around this. The supreme court didn't buy it and told her she still couldn't run. |
Art outside the international airport. |
My driver. I was happy that I could converse with him quite easily. |
I used the self-check in, but had to check in my luggage. Here is the line, which ended up being for Miami. The Dallas line was much shorter! The only other trip up was that I forgot to keep my immigration form that I filled out when I came into the country. They let me fill out another one. |
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That's the coastline of Texas. |
I'm not sure exactly, but I think this is the Brazos river snaking along the Texas country side. |
And here is Fort Worth, Texas. |
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Here's a close up of Fort Worth. When I landed I turned on my phone and I only had 2 messages in 3 weeks. That would be embarassing except that everyone knows that I was gone. After a quick "I'm home" message I got 10 or 15 text messages in the next minute. It's good to have friends. I was supposed to be picked up by an ex-student, but one of my hockey buddies wanted to do lunch, so he came instead. |
When I got into my car I found that the heat had caused the rear view mirror to fall off. Everyone I told was surprised, but said it was easy to get the adhesive at any autoparts store. |
Back home my lawn is not quite as green as my neighbor's. Why? It's been 34 straight days of over 100 degrees. Usually, my lawn does OK because it has a lot of Bermuda grass in it, but this year is too much for even Bermuda. |
My recuerdos (souvenirs): two blankets (the right one is King size) and 10 pounds of chocolate. O Yeah! |
Expected the last picture to be the last, but then I unpacked and this came out (the little dot). |
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It was a live, Guatemalan spider. I'm not scared of spiders and know their vital role in any environment, but I also know that invader species are very bad. They have wiped out species all over the world. Do I think this little pin-head sized spider is that dangerous? I don't know, but I can't risk it. So, usual for me, I killed him. That night I went to a hockey game (just watched) and again went out to eat afterwards. 111 degrees outside and cold inside. |
"And Bob's Your Uncle." British phrase Kevin taught me. It means: "And there it is." The End.
