it´s all coming together

Dan: Even though I was only scheduled to teach for 3 hours last week, every time I went to the school, I was asked to cover another class. So my evenings were busy this week. I’ll give a sample of the type of people I’m teaching, at least last week; Federico, an import/export logistics guy from a huge holdings company with branches in 70 countries, Julio and Silvia, two accountants, Cristina, an Italian woman who needs to improve her English for her interview in Belgium next month for an EU scholarship to an international relations masters program, and Augusto, a general manager for a hydroelectric power company that builds 4 hydro stations around the world each year. Yesterday I felt like finally my studies in international relations were being put to use when I was making up interview questions for Cristina. Those incredibly boring macro and international econ courses that I barely passed 15 years ago provided me with just enough knowledge to keep up with Julio and Silvia’s business English curriculum. It’s all coming together. They* laughed when I said I wanted to study International Relations in Minnesota. Well who is laughing now? My life’s accumulation of knowledge has finally panned out, and allowed its application in a 12-peso per hour job.

*The people at Scott Hansen’s Comedy Gallery, the night my friends and I from St. Cloud sat in the front row and got singled out by the comedian onstage, Frank from Mystery Science Theater 3000, in 1994. His comment was something like, “St. Cloud, a real hotbed of international activity!”

Food: Pizza here is quite common, and a nice cheap thing for two people to split. I don’t know how many mozzarella pizzas we have split, for the lack of better options. There are usually only two varieties available anyway, the other one having ham on it. The mozzarella pizza varies in quality but always has a lot of cheese, is usually quite greasy, always includes green olives (with pits), and sometimes red pepper slices. The degree of extra herbs added for flavor has ranged from yummy to none at all. And as I think we mentioned before, sometimes you get some hardboiled egg on top. Some are baked on stones, some in plain old ovens, and one I’m sure was baked over fire. Tomato sauce is almost non-existent.

Drink: Fernet. I had heard a little about it, so I picked up a bottle. It comes in regular and mint. It’s a 90 proof alcohol. The old folks drink some after meals, I guess with water or soda, as a digestive. The young folks mix it with coke. Lou was told that a party without fernet is a failure. The flavor is similar to cloraseptic throat spray.