Day 30.

Observations:

-Last night Harry Potter 5 was on HBO. I watched it and teared up when Harry triumphs over Voldemort's possession and says, "You're the weak one. And you'll never know love,or friendship. And I feel sorry for you." Gets me every time.
-This morning I went to the Thursday morning devotional, where I saw a woman who told me that she is good friends with Melisa and that Melisa had talked about me! This woman, Noami, apparently spent some time living with Melisa's family (Noami is Peruvian, like the Castros) and is currently raising funds to go be a missionary in Mali for five years...!
-While at the meeting, I also ran into Joe Yoder, an American man from Ohio who did orientation with us six years ago. He was only planning to stay for three months at the time, but one thing led to another and now he lives here with his tica wife (who I met today).
-I had to run some errands today and went into Universal, downtown's equivalent of a Macy's. It's decent sized -- there's an escalator going up...but there's not one going down.
-Also, while looking around downtown, I found a few bookstores that sold English books! Alas...all the paperbacks were anywhere from $14-21. No wonder no one reads here.
-Waiting for the bus this morning, I watched a young woman holding a fistful of medicines give her nauseous five-year-old son a grape Fanta. I watched him vomit the purple liquid all over the sidewalk. The mother simply wiped his face on his sleeve and yanked him onto the bus in front of me.
-The number of blind people here is overwhelming. I can remember my dad commenting on how no one uses any sort of eye protection when doing construction (including while welding). I wonder what's going to happen to all the of us teens who blast our headphones into our brain; I know I'm one of them.
-Peanuts here are very, very expensive.
-Pandora (the music service) doesn't work here! The licenses don't cross borders past the US...I guess it's time I actually start living like a "missionary" and "sacrifice something".
-Today on the bus, I watched a father and son share a burrito. And a drink that they sipped out of a straw, the beverage sealed off in a knotted grocery bag.
-There are no street names here.
-There is a lot of barbed wire.

-Hannah