It`s been a while since I`ve consistantly updated. Things have been crazy busy with finding a job and getting things going here. Since I now have both jobs going at once, I`ve been putting in alot of hours… especially at Kafka. At Kafka we`re getting heavy into ADD mode and working on about 10 things at once. Once we get our first initial ideas off the ground, things should get a bit more manageable…
Since working at 2 bars wasn`t enough, I`ve decided to begin living at one…
I`ve worked out a deal with the owner of Kafka and am now living in the hostel gratis (don`t worry, I`m getting paid too). It actually seems like it`ll be a good deal, I get to live there for free, and in addition, whenever I`m working at either of the two bars I can eat for free.
And for those of you who are thinking of visiting, have no worries, there`s enough room for everybody… I now have my own personal room with a bed for almost every day of the week. I have a room with 3 bunkbeds and a window. I`m going to have to work on getting a shelf up or something so I`m not litterally living out of a suitcase, but for the time being, I`m happy with just having a private room.
Unfortunately, this all means that I will no longer be staying with Stella and the fam. Though it was great and some of the best times of my life, I really can`t afford to continue living there. Fortunately, Kafka`s is only about 4 blocks from Stella`s house, so I`m sure that I`ll be running into them all of the time.
So my camera is not only a piece, it`s officially broken. After my whole experience with the con-artist/camera-repairman I decided to take things into my own hands and fix the camera myself. I spent basically a whole weekend tinkering with this thing. I took the entire lens apart, cleaned it, and then reassembled.
Camera chingada in pieces
Lens in pieces
Stella and Karla seem to think that I actually broke my camera by trying to fix it, however, the truth is that I actually did fix it. I got the lens to close and got to the point where I could actually take a photo. In my excitement of having fixed the camera, I took a photo (and date stamped it because I saw something like this coming)
Last shot
This is what I got. I was able to have it to take a shot but couldn`t get the shutter to open. Shortly after, the lens decided to jam again and the camera is still in the same state it was in before I took it apart.
I am still debating as to whether I should pay to bring it to another place to have them look at it. Though it is slowly setting in, I still haven`t fully accepted the fact that my camera is dead. I`ve looked into buying the same exact camera new and am coming to terms with the fact that this is probably the more realistic option.
So I`m not sure if it was in addition to or apart from my other parasite experience (at this point I don`t even care), but I had another examine de heces (which by the way cost me Q300 or $40 and was made out to “Brina Jonez”). It came up positive as having Helicobacter Pylori Antigeno. After looking at the results, the doctor sent me home with 2 weeks of antibiotics and a few other perscriptions to aid me in the process of ridding my body of parasitos.
Examine de heces
That being said, I have made my way down the road to recovery. I have now finished all of my antibiotics, and all in all, things are basically back to normal. I have now lost all interest in any kind of street food or whatever else that could possibly lead to another 6 weeks of diarria. I think it is safe to say that I have learned my lesson (even though I still don`t even know what caused this whole thing)…
So after my extensive job search, I have found a few gigs to pay the bills. (As a side note, let me just say that unless you are are beautiful girl in her mid 20`s, it`s almost impossible to find a bartending/waiter job in Antigua. I`m pretty sure I visited close to every bar in Antigua and heard from at least 5 or 6 of them that they were only looking for a woman bartender. I lost two jobs to girls too)
So anyways, I have started working at two places, one is called Kafka (http://kafkahostel.com/Kafka_Bar+Grill/HOME.html) and is a bar/restaurant/hostel. I`m going to be working there as a bartender/designer. The owner is a 30 year old guy who is really cool and laid back. When I`m not working behind the bar, he basically wants to go through the entire place (which is actually really big) with me and work on the image of the place. He`s really open to whatever and has really good ideas. We`ve already had a few brainstorming sessions about all of the possible things that we can do (as long as its cheap). He just opened a new entryway to the place and we`ve started by painting KAFKA in giant letters on the wall (which I will post pictures of after we`ve finished).
The second place I`m working at is a fancypants restaurant called Bistro Cinq (http://www.bistrotcinq.com/). I am currently being trained as a mixologist…. seriously, “mixologist”… I can`t help but be excited about this. This`ll be cool because I`ll be making all kinds of drinks rather than just opening beers for people. The other plus is that everybody else there (other than the owner) is Guatemalan, meaning that everything is in Spanish. I`m being taught mostly by a 19 year old kid named Jonathan who, from what I`ve seen up to this point, really knows what the hell he`s doing.
More to come…
I admit, the blog`s updates have been few and far between in the past month or so…
Things are happening, they`ll be more posts soon…
So Friday was my last day at Familias de Esperanza. It`s been about 3 months since I began. The work was great and great for my Spanish too…which led me to apply for a fulltime paid position about a little over a month ago. The only catch was that I`d have to commit to work there for a year in order to be on the payroll. Since I really didn`t want to be banging nails for over a year, I originally asked if I could work for only six months (especially since I had already recieved all of the training I`d need). Mario, the bossman, told me that 6 months should be ok, I`d just have to talk to the people in the office about it. I went and talked to a girl in the office and told her what I was interested in doing. She told me that she`d ask the higher-ups and let me know. After ALOT of waiting (vacations for people in the office, my own sick time, interviews for other people interested in the position, etc) she got back to me and said it was only possible if I`d commit to a year. I said that I would and we had a full-fledged interview…
I was pretty sure I was going to get the job, I had already worked in the shop for 2.5 months and more or less knew what the job was about. In addition, all of the other applicants to the job were in the US and had to be interviewed over the phone. I figured I`d have the upper hand.
Although I wasn`t totally excited about the idea of doing construction for a year, I figured that it`d be a good thing to be involved in and would be good for my Spanish. The office then got back to me this past Wednesday and told me that they had gone with somebody else. My initial idea of working for only 6 months had led them to be skeptical about whether I`d really be there for a full year… Although I had been banking on getting the job, it wasn`t earth shattering news that I didn`t get it, I had been having second thoughts about the commitment and the tiny amount of money that I`d be recieving.
So anyways, where does this leave me… unemployed. Needless to say, not much has changed. This is ok, but`ll require a bit of a change of plans. Up to this point I`ve actually been really busy between working and on and off Spanish classes . However, my current situation with dinero has lead me to end my classes and to the realization that a job is a job and that money is money. Since I`m not at all excited about working in Guatemala City (I have my reasons… but this is unfortunately where all of the jobs are), I`ve started looking for a restaurant/bar job here. I`ve had to consider what my priorities are… and Spanish is first… in order to get Spanish I need to be able to stay here… this means I need to be makin`the moneys. I`ve walked to just about every restaurant/bar in Antigua at this point and should be hearing back from people this week. It`s about power positive thinking…
We`ll see how it goes. If nothing comes through I`ve considered adding a paypal donation box to the site…
My on and off Spanish classes with Aura are now over. I`d continue taking more, but even though they`re cheap they get really expensive once you start adding the weeks up.
As for El Subjuntivo… it`s hard. Not really, but it takes a ton of practice to know when to use it and when not to. I figure it`ll take me at least a few more months to begin using it in regular conversation.
Since I`m on my own now I`ve also decided to get a book. As boring as this seems, I need to keep my Spanish intake as high as possible. I looked around for a decent textbook, saw that they were really expensive, and finally just asked Jaime if he had one. He gave me a big fat “Spanish Level IV” textbook which should hold me for a while….
Those of you that have been checking the photo section may have realized that this month`s number of photos has been pretty skimpy. Unfortunately, this is due to the fact that my camera is temporarily out of commission. I have found that taking my camera to work everyday (for 40 minutes of photo ops during the walk each way) has turned out to have negative effects on the camera. There seems to be sand somewhere in the mechanism that closes the lens. Now looking back, I guess it was something about doing construction/concrete work with the unprotected camera in my pocket that seemed to have caused the problem. Who would`ve thought…
So about a 2 weeks ago I took the camera to get fixed. I went to the kodak store in town who then recommended me to a shop that specalizes in fixing cameras. It was somewhat difficult to find the shop, especially since there was no evidence of it even being a public building, let alone a camera shop. There was no sign and nobody inside. It was a tiny one room building with the doors opening into an all blue room with an unattended counter. Very legitimate.
The fact that many people knew about the shop (since I had to ask for the whereabouts probably 5 times) reassured me that it had to be somewhat respectable.
I went in and knocked on the side of the wall.. this brought the owner out from behind a small partition behind the counter. I went through what was wrong with my camera and asked how much it would cost to fix. He told me that it would cost Q50 ($6.50) to disassemble the camera and, if it was only sand in the lens mechanism, it would then cost an additional Q200 ($26) to do a complete cleaning and replacement of small parts within the camera. If there was something broken inside the camera it would most likely cost more money. Since I have become an old miser with my money during my time here in Guatemala, I wanted to be able to see what was wrong with the camera before accepting to pay 30 pesos to just take out a grain of sand. I clearly explained that I did not want to invest alot of money into an old camera that was probably on its way out anyways. I also asked how much it would cost to fix the broken battery cover. “probably about Q100″. I told the guy to disassemble it and that I would be back in 2 days to hear what the diagnosis was. I then took my reciept for Q50 and left.
Then, 2 days later, sensing that there was the possiblilty of BS on the horizon, I returned to the shop with my teacher Aura. Since we came very early (3pm), the shop was closed. We were about to walk away when a car pulled up and a man came to open the door. He let us in and explained that he was the owner`s brother. I described my camera to him and said that I had come back to hear what the problem was. The man told me that it was going to cost Q200 to fix the problem. I then asked to see the camera. He then brought the camera out and gave it to me. I looked it over, found that the battery cover had been mickey moused (but done well I`d have to admit), turned it on and off, and realized that the lense was now closing. I was curious about what was going on here since I had clearly explained that I did not want to do anything with the camera until I had seen it unassembled. “So he still has to fix it?” I ask. “Ya, he`s taken the camera apart and found that it needs to be cleaned”. “So he took the camera apart, found that it was dirty and then put it back together again to see if I wanted to fix it?”. “Yep”. “Hmm, that`s kind of weird”. There was some definite funny business going on here… clearly a sign of the “gingo tax” being put into play here. I`m almost positive the guy took a can of compressed air, blew out the lense, dislodged the sand, micky-moused the battery cover, and called it a day. Now that it was fixed, he`d be guaranteed that he`d get the Q250 (for his “full camera maintenance”).
“So why did he put it back together if he needs to fix it?”. “I don`t know, you`ll have to come back and talk to him, he`ll be here in about an hour”. I started to walk away when Aura, sensing the shadyness of what was going on, said “are you going to leave the camera here”. The brother, being the professional that he was, said “oh, ya, here you go” and gave me the camera. We then walked out of the store with camera in hand and the reciept in my bag.
So my plan was use the camera for a week, see if it continued to work, and then return to the store and pay what we had agreed on, Q50. I figured that this would be the fair thing to do. However, after a few days, the lense jammed again, leaving me in the same situation.
My next step is to buy a small screwdriver and just do it myself… I`m still deciding about the Q50.
So I had myself a visit to the doctors today. After singing him my sad song, the doctor came to the conclusion that I have a parasite.
The parasite is called Giardia. It´s a parasite that hides out in your upper digestive system. Because it is so high up your system, it does not show up in any sort of laboratory tests, only if they put a tube down your throat.
After doing a quick google search a found a picture of the little assholes.
And they`re totally smiling...
I`ve been told that, in most cases, parasites hang out in your system for a long period of time. One goes through periods where one seems to recover, only to be followed by a downward spiral back into sickness (and the bathroom).
After peleando with these guys for over a month, the gloves have now come off. I now have a bag full of pills to put to good use. I mean comon, they`re smiling…
I should hopefully be better in about a week…