Lisa goes South

i have a job. again. i guess it was like what, 2 months without a job before i got one. wow, i didn't even know i was a workaholic. but working here is not like anywhere else. i work a chile's bar and restaurant, where there are salsa lessons every tuesday and friday night. so on tuesdays and fridays i get to dance. every shift i can drink, although i usually don't (unless i make a piña colada too big, oops, happened again!). my salary per 8hr shift is: 30 quetzales, dinner, two rum and cokes, and tips. what it boils down to is that i make 50 cents an hour. insane. but i must say, i'm a decent waitress...in english. in spanish, i suck. case in point: for some reason i have a psychological block between the numbers four and five in spanish. the word 'cinco' creates a particular image in my head, the image of four. cuatro is also four in my cerebral spaces. for this reason, i brought out 4 plates of speghetti to 5 spaniards from catalan the other day. later they bitched about the service at my restaurant while they were at a different restaurant, a restaurant that my friend works at. i then had the pleasure of knowing exactly what they said about me. so i have the reputation of being a shitty camarera in spain. nothing like being famous in places you've never been. well such is life. that only means there's room for improvement, right? i mean at this point i figure i'll be waitressing myself down the continent, so it's kind of nice to start a little bit lower on the ladder. then when i make it to south america, i'll be the best damn gringa waitress on the continent. got to have aspirations. the other funny thing about being a waitress is my last job. at my last job, i was a molecular biologist. now i'm a waitress, and not a very good one at that. just goes to show there are a million different kinds of intelligence: and i know for sure that one helps you be a good biologist and a completely different type leads to perfect waitressing. the other big thing that has happened here is i am now 27. my third birthday in a row away from home. but not away from friends. i've got a buddy, her name is marielle, and her birthday is august ninth. she came down to san pedro so we could celebrate together, and celebrate we did. another friend also came back to san pedro for my cumpleaños, megan from LA. we managed to turn it into a week. i'm still recovering, but i'm almost back to normal. for my birthday we all ate too much and went out dancing. i didn't get too plastered, since i had already thoroughly embarassed myself a few days earlier with quetzalteca, the local, cheap rotgut. then after the bar, in typical lisa style we managed to bother our hostel neighbors by laughing until at least 3am for 4 or 5 days in a row. as a result, we have decided to sell ear plugs at the hostel: we make the noise and you buy the earplugs from us. perfect synchronicity. at least with the ear plug business i won't have to molest anybody with my poor waitressing skills. and there will be work wherever i go! hmmm. the third big thing that has changed in my life is chess. i am an addict. the other day i played nine hours in a row. and like waitressing, it's something that can only get better. so hey,all you chess geniuses out there, send me your strategies! i need to get up one on marielle. we're both obsessed. and we're both bad waitresses in foreign languages--english is her achilles heel. and we share the same room in the hotel california, i mean hotel mendez. so you'll just have to tune in next time to see what more mayhem this dynamic duo is up to in beautiful san pedro la laguna. xxxxoooo lisa ps. hey, if you are up to it khamille, what about posting some of those pictures you developed to the blog? or send them to my email? even just a few would be lovely: the creme de la creme as it were. i would love to see them. and don't worry, more rolls to come. should i send them to ryan or to you?