Not so bad

What a day already. It started out all fine and good with the ever-soothing sounds of roosters crowing outside the window of my hotel room. Somehow the crow of a cock is less annoying than the sound of my host mom trying to keep the baby from crying.

"Mire, mire, un bicho. Donde esta el bicho?" over and over again, as loud as she can talk without actually screaming at the top of her lungs.

That's "Look, look, a bug. Where's the bug?"

I always know from underneath my T-shirt sheet (graciously left for me by some former volunteer) that the bug she speaks of is a cockroach. We have quite an infestation. And that's why I decided to sleep in a hotel in Buenos Aires last night. My host mom promised to fumigate my room.

A few years ago a cockroach crawled into the ear of a volunteer living in my house and wrapped its little serrated legs around the volunteer's eardrum. He had to take the bus six hours to a doctor in San Jose, all the while hearing the nasty little critter scratch graffiti into the wall of his ear.

But that's a different story that has very little to do with my current frustrations. Like I said already, everything started out swell. I watched two movies in English last night while enjoying a picnic dinner - prepackaged refried red beans in Lizano sauce, corn tortillas, three processed-cheese slices, two beers and a can of spicy-hot tomato juice.

I slept well in the spacious double bed, although the non-T-shirt-style sheet left something to be desired. By the way, did you know that the word "T-shirt" sounds an awful lot like the word "teacher"?

"What do you wear to sleep?"

"I wear teacher to sleep."

"No, no, no, you wear a T-shirt to sleep."

"Yeah, that's what I said."

Anyway, for breakfast, I went to my favorite bakery where they know to go ahead and fix me a coffee with milk, no sugar. I drank my coffee and ate my strawberry-filled pastry and skimmed the newspaper, not finding any news too horrible.

I went to the ATM to discover I’ve been paid and am not as dead broke as I thought. Then I ran some errands and finally made my way to the Internet café.

And this is where things got frustrating, but you know, for the life of me, I can’t remember what was so frustrating about it, other than it took more than an hour and a half to open my Gmail account. I was really fired up about it when I started this post, but after listing all the good things that have occurred this weekend – cockroach-free living, movies in English, beer, double bed, coffee and pastries, money – well, now it seems that other than the fact that the space bar sticks on this keyboard, I have nothing to complain about.