La multi ani!

I still have a blog? A lot of things happened in a short amount of time and it seems that I've gotten a bit backed up. 

Just before I left for a Christmas vacation, I played in a basketball tournament with a team of professors from my school district. We won the tournament! So even if I don't accomplish anything else in this town, at least the professors will forever remember me for that. Sports are a big deal here. 

I spent Christmas with my entire nuclear family in Atlanta (quite a feat). It was really great to see everyone again; everyone is doing great--Sofia's looking to beat my record for master's degrees, Ignacio's being as intense as possible in medical school, Mom and Dad are flitting back and forth between Atlanta and San Juan and planning to visit me at some point soon.

After Christmas, I went to Romania to see this girl I'm pretty fond of and meet her family... And I finally learned how most Peace Corps volunteers felt when they first arrived in-country! I didn't speak a word of Romanian and it was a bit tough communicating with people, but I had a blast. Needless to say I'm going to brush up a bit on the language so that next time I can at least tell people that I eat glass and it doesn't hurt me. 

After a tough farewell at the airport, I headed back to Atlanta for just under a day--and I was remarkably lucky that my plane made it in, as the airport had been shut down for several days just prior to my arrival. In a flash, I was on a plane back to Quito with suitcases bursting at the seams.

So I get picked up by a friend in Quito and he takes me back to my apartment in my site--at this point I'm severely jet-lagged and sleep deprived, as I hardly slept on any of my plane rides--only to find that mold and fungus have taken over. The apartment was always pretty humid but the combination of the change to rainy season and my prolonged absence had disastrous consequences; the place was unlivable and just about everything was slightly green and smelled acridly.

Awesome. Since my rent was due in 3 days, I made the decision that I would move. I found another place and came to an agreement with its owner, who said it would be ready shortly. I moved out, storing my things in a friend's spare room. Well, it turns out that this prospective landlord broke their word and backed out on our agreement--so I suddenly became homeless! I forgot to mention, I was also really sick from some exotic Romanian super-bug that I got from Adina. Pretty sweet homecoming, huh?

It took about 10 days of looking around before I finally settled on a new place. In the meantime I was able to sleep in PCV Sarah's sweet attic. That was a lifesaver.

I brought back a projector for the school, to aid the computing professor (profe Guido) in teaching his classes. So of course, upon my return, I find out that he has resigned and will be going to Miami to work. To sum it up: after working for the school for two years with no textbooks, projector, Internet access, or reliable computers, he decides he's had enough--at which point the school acquires a projector and should acquire Internet access in a few weeks.

This was the projector's first official use--to show this ooooolllld video of a lion hugging its adoptive human parents at Guido's farewell. You can't make this stuff up: