I’ve realized that one of the frustrations of living down here is my inability to express complex ideas in Spanish. I must come off sounding like a ditz with the comprehension of a ten-year-old. Examples: someone asks me how I feel about George Bush. I think about everything I could say about our president, and then realize that I lack the appropriate vocabulary. “I don’t like him,” I answer. Or last night, when Dona Adilia and Don Juan were for some reason asking about lightning rods, and my opinion of them as an engineer. I actually have a pretty good understanding of how and why lightning rods work (thanks, Zhenya!), but I was reduced to saying “the lightning likes tall things, and then the electricity goes to the ground.” Dona Adilia was also asking about radiation from telephone towers, because she had heard that they were building a new one near her house, and some people said they were dangerous. I told her that I didn’t know for sure, but people also say that microwaves and cell phones are dangerous, and they’re still widely used. I was trying to reassure her, but I think I just ended up giving her a fear of cell phones.
It turns out that the most useful function of my laptop is that of a lamp. I can go online at the office or in internet cafes, but when the electricity goes out in the evenings (often), my only source of light is my laptop screen. A pretty expensive nightlight. I’m kind of worried that the heat down here is affecting my electronics. One of my laptop batteries died completely, and I’ve noticed that the batteries for my camera are holding charge for very short periods of time. Hopefully it’s just my batteries being affected, since they’re the cheapest components to replace...
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