Charlie + Laundry = Fail

My new housemates have finally arrived! They came in last night around five in the evening and promptly went to unpacking their bags, of which each had more than I, and bigger. Stacey and Jessie are from Virginia and have both graduated from Washington & Lee thereabouts. This won’t be the first they’ve lived together.

Around noon today I had Don Chomo come and teach me to wash my clothes in the pila. As we took them from my laundry bag I noticed they were imbued with a certain foul aroma. Chomo set to work, showing me just how to bunch up the pant legs and rake them across the washboard surface. I tried and tried, and time and again he would show me and have me grab and wring just so. By the time I was finished my knuckles were raw and ever so slightly bleeding. As I hung my clothes up to dry my nose caught a whiff of a certain smell. I was the same funk which I had set out to oust.

I finished washing clothes with just enough time to meet Miguel Angel at Enlace to go to a nearby swimming pool. We caught a “bus” (a van-like vehicle that can be found just about everywhere, scurrying about the narrow streets and honking at anything that moves) for three quetzals and paid three more at the door for a total of 76 cents. It was rather cool out, so we had the outdoor pool pretty much to ourselves. Some other guys were there and presumably had swum, but all I saw them do the entire time I was the was stand on the platform at the top of the diving board and dare each other to jump. After a few minute we decided to leave. The trip back was another 3 quetzals bringing the grand total of the afternoon’s entertainment to $1.16. Not bad!

One more thing... The FTP server here is kind of hit-and-miss, so in order to test whether or not it's up at any given time, I threw together a little webcam that updates once every minute. You can view it at: http://oregonstate.edu/~thompcha/webcam/