Day 2, August 23, 2011

Tuesday August 23, 2011

Well today has turned into one of those sad exhausting nights. Arrived at the office just in time to leave for the meeting. It was a really good presentation. It’s amazing how many simple safety things the University doesn’t have! No smoke alarms, no fire extinguishers, and no evacuation/emergency exit routes. Just unbelievable. The only reason why the University is implementing this program of training individuals on prevention and attention to emergencies is because the government has mandated it. We are in 2010 and the government is just now mandating safety and security measure like this. It’s these types of things that remind me that I am indeed in a 3rd world country. It’s just amazing that the country can have so many up to date material things, but they never bothered to train people on firs aid/cpr or simple emergency materials.

The meeting went from 9:30 to non. The dean of sciencias humanas, probably one of the most important people to be there took a phone call 10 minutes into the meeting and didn’t return till the very end. How rude! We changed the date so that he could attend. I'm not sure yet how I feel about him. I went to get lunch and returned to the office around 2 to write in my journal and look over what CAT tools I might do. The janitor came in and we chatted for a bit. Eulalia finally arrived around 3:15. Of course I was going to try to get away early but she had me type up the attendance from the meeting. It didn’t take long and she fed me mandarinas so it was all right, lol. I ended up leaving around 4 and she was fine with it. She told me to come in tomorrow at 9, so that was nice. I think if I keep a good relationship established with her and work hard when I'm there I can maneuver whatever hours I want.

I left and walked home only to find that the padlock on the gate was locked and for some reason my key didn’t work. So I walked to the restaurant to get a key then walked back home to drop my stuff off. After that I had to go on a mission to find a place that copied keys. My host mom said that up from the Aki store there would be on. So I walked all the way up to the mall, nothing. There are about a million and two hardware and car repair stores but none seemed to copy keys! I stopped at the Aki to get granola and on my way back to the restaurant I asked at like every other store to see where they copied keys. They all kept sending me farther down the street but by god I found one!

I returned to the restaurant to eat. Really good soup, not so good Segundo plato. It was ram intestines. I didn’t even try to stomach it. My host dad asked if I like it and I politely said no, but that I tried it. I miss Tumbaco food that Mama Teresa made. I recharged my phone and came home. Hot shower was great! Watched some dexter and called it a night.