Current mood:	bored
Entry tags:	life, travel

A grab-bag of anecdotes
On Sunday evening, after returning from Semuc Champey, I went out for dinner with some other Spanish students. Our waitress was an American schoolteacher who had moved here to start her own school and was currently learning Spanish. She sold a few of us on a new drink that's like a pinacolada with lemon instead of pineapple. Noticing that the rum comprised half the cost of the drink, I asked for sans rum but with pineapple added (since I really just wanted a pinacolada). She brought it out shortly and it was delicious. When the bill arrived, however, I made two discoveries at roughly the same time: I'd been charged for the rum and I was quite drunk; the restaurant had spiked my virgin pinacolada! Fortunately, she was more than happy to knock off the cost of the rum from my bill.

On Monday afternoon I went to the local artisan market with Theresa and Meridith to shop for souvenirs. Bargaining is an interesting experience here because even the inflated opening prices are fairly cheap (by American standards) and they vary a lot between vendors. I experimented a little by trying to find the lowest price I could get for a specific item across multiple vendors. In the end I picked up a pair of striped pyjamas and a couple of jade sculptures for a few greenbacks apiece.

When I first arrived in Antigua, I had expected to see many tourists from the US. To my surprise, there are almost as many from Holland. It seems like you can't go anywhere in this city without hearing Dutch being spoken. Apparently the Dutch love visiting central America during their 6 weeks of annual vacation because it is so cheap.

While I've been on vacation, VMware went public on the NYSE at $29/per share but instantly shot up to over $50 and has held that gain so far. Whee :-)

The mosquitoes here have been getting to me. I killed nearly two dozen of them in the past couple of days but they just keep reproducing. Despite the health concerns associated with mosquito coils, I purchased a pack of them and am going to use them for the rest of my stay here. It beats being eaten alive while I sleep.

While at the local supermarket, Theresa and I ran into a local chap who had lived in NYC for 20 years and, consequently, spoke excellent English. He works for the immigration department in the Guatemala City airport and was very friendly, telling us about Guatemala and offering to help us in any way he could while we were here. His wife didn't speak much English but that gave us a chance to use our skimpy Spanish. They gave us their number and we might end up going out for dinner with them before we leave here.