While I was having my coffee this morning, a woman was selling flowers. She seemed particularly in need, so I bought two small bunches of lillies. Those are the favorite flowers of one of my friends, so I thought I’d drop those and a couple of chocolate croissants off for her.
The remainder of the morning was relaxed, lowkey. The girls do what they like doing best on Saturday mornings, cartoons.
Later in the morning Madi went out swimming in the lake with her friends. There are a couple of larger families here from Canada who have been living here for the past four years. They are home schooling their kids. Three of the girls from those two families, and a couple of the kids from school that Madi knows, all went down to swim at the lake. She said they had a great time. This was the first time she’d met the other girls.
After the swim at the lake, Madi went to her sleepover. Five of them from the school slept out on a trampoline. She had a fun at the sleepover, but jammed a couple of her toes and was in a lot of pain. My sister Mia will have to take a look at it when she gets back from the medical trip to Honduras.
Meanwhile, I was learning what it feels like to scramble to make a living. My friend was trained in Tailand to give massages and she is trying to make some money that way. Other ways that she has tried to make a living have dried up for her, and she needs to find a new way to make money. She had posters made. Each hotel or restaurant we went to, we had to talk to the manager or owner. What I thought would take an hour or so, ended up taking four hours.
We kept putting up posters throughout the evening. What struck me today was the amount of initiative a person must take here, if they don’t own a business and want to make money. Beating the pavement or reinventing oneself isn’t an easy process. I hope we made some good connections for her and that business will come of it. I had one of her massages a couple of weeks ago and she is good.
Finally we went and got some food. There is one street food place where they sell bbq beef, with grilled green onions on top, and a dollop of guac and beans for 15Q. Quite a few gringos eat there. Kier says she and her friends have it all the time on Friday or Saturday night when they are out. Paul was going to try it, but ran out of time. We went there and I ordered a couple of meals. We met up with another person, and we all came back to her house to eat. We talked about the events of the day, other places where the we should put up posters or where she needs to follow through in the future.
While we were talking, Cali feel asleep on my friend’s couch. Cali likes my friend because she always makes a huge fuss over her, she didn’t have any girls of her own. We talked late into the evening. When I was ready to go she couldn’t find a key to let me out of her gate. She lives in a compound with about 4 houses and the gate is always locked. We tried to call her friend who lives in one of the other houses, but she didn’t pick up the phone. That was issue number one. Issue number two was that I couldn’t carry Cali to a place where I could catch a tuk tuk. She is too heavy for me and she is nearly impossible to wake up. It was also pouring rain.
The only choices left was to wait until my friend’s son came home, which would normally be about 2 a.m. on a Saturday night. I could have spent the night at her place, but Mia and Kier were coming in at 2:30 a.m. from Honduras. They didn’t have a key to get into Mia’s house. One option was when Mia came into town, come to the gate, I’d give her the key through the fence, and I would get released eventually. Eventually my friend found a key she didn’t know she had at the bottom of her purse. I decided to leave Cali there for the night, because I knew she would find that an unexpected treat.
I rarely catch a tuk at midnight, I’m not usually out that late. The tuk I caught informed me he would charge 10Q because it’s late. I was fine with that. Kier never has to pay double, but so be it. Then we stopped right after PanaRock and picked up another guy. Usually they are supposed to ask if you want to share the tuk, this guy didn’t. Turned out to be Kier’s guitar teacher. He had just finishing a gig at The Porch, and lives close to us, so that worked out fine. When we dropped him off, he only paid 5Q. But when I got out, I only had a 10Q and asked for change, but he said no he was still charging me 10Q. No use arguing. In tuk tuk land, there is no justice, so stop wishing you had some.
All in all, a crazy busy, tiring, intersting day. Tonight I’m sleeping all by myself in the house for the first time. Paul’s home, Kier is sleeping somewhere between Honduras and Panajachel, Madi is sleeping on a trampoline down the street, Cali is sleeping on my friend’s couch. I’m so tired I could sleep anywhere.