“Burn a cd for a girl, she has one cd. Teach a girl how to burn a cd…”

Hours: 6

Normally, I'm of the mentality “when you're a guest, eat whatever is put in front of you”. I just couldn't do it this morning though. The copious amounts of sunburn affected me as it always does: low fever and queasy stomach. Add that to a tortilla with a fried egg (one of the few things I have trouble eating (the texture and smell just throw me off)) and nada, couldn’t do it. It was ok though, somehow between the house and ESBAO I picked up a coke which helped settle it all.

Amanda showed us the paper. We were in it again (remember, El Mundo is stalking us). This time we’re on the front page, the headline above the fold with the story and pictures of yours truly on the inside. This actually directly influences the day’s events.

Juan brought several of the older boys, in part to learn and in part to help. We started by testing to see if they actually had fixed the power. We managed to turn them all on and not trip the circuit. Yay! I was giving Julie instructions for how to get ride of those pesky power on passwords (somehow, one of the machines has one) when Neito popped in. He needed a few people to go with him across town. A school had seen the aforementioned article and was wondering if we could swing by and help them with a little maintenance and repairs they weren’t sure how to do. Virginia, Alexa, Madeline, Juan, his younger ‘brother’, Neito and I went. Not knowing quite what to expect, we grabbed a few extra parts. I got to hold a fistful of RAM without an antistatic bag for the ride… it felt so wrong.

It was interesting to say the least. Raphael Ramirez Primary has some lab. They have several machines with Windows ’95, several with Vista and some with all possibilities in between. Some of the machines hooked into the internet, others didn’t. Their main concerns were several suspected virus infected computers and 2 that wouldn’t turn on. One of these was a matter of flipping the power supply switch into the “on” position. The other was strange, the power supply was knocked into the machine (nothing held it in place) and the only way to get –into- it to screw it in place and poke around as needed was by means of one of those weird circular keys like the used to lock floors in elevators. They didn’t have the key so we set to work with setting up virus protection and cleaning up those that could be cleaned up, since let’s face it, a 2 G hard drive can’t hold a modern antivirus and still fully function.

We worked there for several hours before returning to ESBAO to meet up with everyone. They had hooked the internet into several computers. It was working but moving sluggishly. Since it was getting to that time where we stop, Taylor and I resolved to crack into their infrastructure and see what they had set up tomorrow. Of course, since the internet is provided by the city and thus under governmental control (including monitoring) there are certain things we can’t touch. If nothing else, we can see what they have and maybe try to find an improvement that doesn’t interfere. I’m excited; I will probably get to do the part I really love.

Over lunch, my grandmother started asking about U.S. politics. It’s been a popular topic as of late… can’t imagine why… She’s actually the one who told me about Hillary pulling out… I’ve been in such an internet blackout the past few days, only getting on to update this, I’ve not had time to read up. Even though, I don’t think the internet in this house could take CNN or BBC’s web pages. It would break. I can only imaging how much gas has gone up since I’ve been gone. I need to find out how to make the soup with the noodles and greens. I’m willing to bet it has chicken broth in it but it’s so good.

After lunch we met again, dancing once more. I’m getting a little better, I still suck though. We’ve now incorporated the shoes’ special noises, skirt motion, the fans, floor movement and spinning. We could put on our own floor show at one of those insulated resorts in Cancun. I’ve danced so much in the past three days, my hips are rebelling. We gathered up after for our standard evening discussion. Most of the topics that came up were what more we could do for Casa Hogar. Everything from trying to start an annual drive within SJA to attempting to contact Oprah came up. I’m sure we’ll find a few good ideas.

I’m not sure exactly what we’re doing tomorrow. We were supposed to head into the mountains some to a school we set up last year to check on them but there have been many mudslides and much flooding so we’ll have to play it by ear.

I love playing things by ear.
I’m off now, my father rented a movie. Since I stay up a little later than both kids working on this and watching a little bit of television to try and expand my vocabulary he figured it would be good. He actually almost rented an odd sci-fi I watched right before coming down here: Cube:2. I would kill to see the Spainish dub over of that.