Telephone? Please?

So I've called some folks and not called others, and I was thinking that if any of you want to spend some money on me, I'd be beyond wonderful if you called, even for like 10 minutes. Anything longer than that and I recommend a phone card; they are wonderful and easy to use from your home phone.

My number is:
011-507-253-3664

If you call, it's best to call in the evenings, no later than 9 o'clock my time, please! (that is 7 PST)

Thanks so much!
Laurel

yay, internet cafes!

My poor computer is sick with a virus so I´ve made the trek in the rain to an internet cafe, fairly succesfully. I´m slowly getting comfortable navigating here, especially now that I can weasel my way out of the house alone every once in a while. This is majorly nice and allows me to walk everywhere as I am accustomed and not pay for taxis like my friends here usually do.

Things are going pretty smoothly here; I feel like I am finally starting to adapt to the way of life. Relations with the family have improved drastically, and my grandmother apologized to me about the whole deal with Jaime, which I appreciated. Maru let me sleep through Church on Sunday, too. School is good; the classes are still boring but I am making more friends and am having way more to do after school. Also, politeness seems to dictate that boys should buy girls things. Hey, I´m into free ice cream.

My hair is still not quite long enough for a ponytail, but does go into cute little pigtails rather nicely/disturbingly. I have to buy more hairties though because I only have one, and pigtails implies two. When I wear my hair down I have I Rio-style pseudo-mullet, which might work fine for Rio but just looks like 80s style death on me... Oh well, what can ya do...

Today I think that I don´t have school, and hope that everyone was telling me the truth, or else I´ll have fun explaining stuff tomorrow. I still haven´t actually had a full week because these people party so damn much. No, really, anyone will tell you so.

Tuesday I start choir and Wednesday my flute gets back from the repair shop so I will hopefully start band.

Miss you guys!

Love,
Laurel

Movies and Swear Words, Oh My

Well, life goes on here in La Chorrera, same as always, I guess. My mom and grandma are furious with Jaime, my brother, and I don´t know why because with raised voices, fast speech, and intense amounts of swearing it´s hard to glean any content from what they say. Therefore things are a little stressful here at home, and kind of leave me confused.

Last night I went to the movies with some friends from school, including a kind of attractive Chinese guy who´s favorite singer is Alanis Morissette. The movie, Invisible, was actually good, so I enjoyed myself. The night before I went to another movie with Kate, my American AFS friend, which was not really my kind of film. I had a great time anyways because Kate is awesome and it´s always a relief to hang out with somebody who has any kind of clue what you are dealing with on a daily basis.

Today Maru tried to give me chicken sausage and I told her that I didn´t want any and she started yelling at me about how it is still chicken and how there is NO difference between that and any other chicken, blah, blah, blah. My grandma interjected feebly, "We already know that she doesn´t LIKE sausage," but to know avail. Then Maru said, "She´s not vegetarian, she´s just a weird eater!" and I interrupted in my `icy voice of steel´ that I am vegetarian, I do not normally eat chicken, and I am only eating chicken here so that I do not starve. She looked shocked and said, "Really?" and I thought, how many times have my mom and I told her this already?

Similarly, last Sunday we were at Mass and she was telling me what to do in Church and I told her that I didn´t feel comfortable crossing myself, etc., because I respect Catholicism and thus do not want to imitate it without belief. The response: "You´re not Catholic?! You never told me!" Yes, I did Maru. More than once. Do you actually hear a single word I tell you or do you hear what you tell yourself?

School is boring but okay. People are nice, but I wish that my classes were challenging in any way, shape, or form. Also, my chemistry teacher keeps giving me zeros because I´m not on his class list or because he supposedly can´t read my name (which was quite legible, thanks, I asked my classmates) when, uh, he has to ADD ME to his class list because I´m a NEW EXCHANGE STUDENT. D´oh.

Whatever. So in some ways things are great and in others they are stressful as hell and not so great. If anyone wants to send me books, cds, or rainbow things that would be very appreciated.

Love,
Laurel

The end of another week draws nigh...

Things are going pretty well here, especially schoolwise. The math and physics we are doing here is all stuff I have been doing since 6th or 7th grade, so I want to teach myself calculus. Tomorrow I audition for the choir, which should be interesting, to say the least. After the 12th I start playing in the band, so we´ll see how that goes.

There has been some family drama, because I am always sleepy and cannot eat enough (ME, not eat enough!), but for the most part I really like my family and cannot imagine changing households. Turns out that half the problem anyways was that I was eating cereal for breakfast instead of oatmeal... My grandmother in particular is basically made of awesome, and we get along. We are both kind of uppity people, and thus we understand each other better than Maru and I, who get along but are of entirely different mindsets.

Hopefully not this weekend, but next, my friend Aleida and I are going into Panamá City to buy me some clothes... I´d like to have a few more things to wear and according to my compañeras, nobody shops in La Chorrera.

This Saturday all of us AFSers in Chorrera and our families are going to the house of María Elena, the coordinator, to have a party. That should be fun!

Oh, mom, if you check this, could you send me the enchilada recipe? Thanks.

Anyways, miss you guys A LOT and talk to you later.

Laurel