Jo’s Jovial Jolly Jocular Journal

I had a very exciting day yesterday! By the end of the day I was very sleepy with all the excitement I had had.

First Miriam and I had to do a training for the employees at a Children’s Home. Beforehand I didn’t feel very well prepared but it went really well I think. And I really love doing trainings, but I had to do it in Spanish, so the combination of not feeling that prepared and it going well gave a bit of adrenaline. Then, after that we went to buy me a new car!!! Yes, that is right, I am the proud owner of (another) Toyota Corolla 1999, silver, full equipo, tinted windows, sound system, flourescent flashing light around the back numberplate. It was exciting driving it back to the office because it was so easy to drive because it drives just like my car at home- so smooth. Yay! It is almost like getting my licence all over again, the independence that it is going to give me.

Then….(the excitement doesn’t stop there) at the end of the day a couple of us stayed back late in the office. We never do that, but randomly this day Miriam and Jessica decided to do some work before the weekend. As we were about to leave the alarms started going off. Miriam came to the back of the office to tell Tracy and I off because thought that it was us being noisy that was making the alarms go off, when all of sudden Jessica started screaming that there was a fire. We went running to the front of the office which is actually the inside of another office and looked in to see a fan on fire and bits of fire dropping off the fan onto the wooden bench below. Miriam quickly opened the two doors between us and the office, Jessica called the Fire Brigade,Tracy ran to get scissors to open the fire extinguisher ran with the fire extinguisher to the other room and sprayed, putting the fire out in an instant, I made some helpful comments like ‘Yep there is a fire’ ‘Be careful’ ‘Yes’ ‘Yay’ ‘You’re my hero’ and so on. Then Tracy ran around the office and we all hugged and high fived and felt like heroes.

That was perhaps the climax of the excitement of the day, but after that I dropped Miriam off and battling Guatemalan roads and traffic (piece of cake really) drove all by myself to meet my friend Victor for an outing to the zoo. After we met up I followed behind his car to get to the zoo. At about the same time that I realised I had lost Victor, I also noticed that my car was making strange squeaking noises. I called him and he suggested that we meet in a petrol station up ahead. So we went into the petrol station and opened up the bonnet to find the engine spurting out great amounts of steam. We had to fill up some water and sat in the petrol station for about an hour to wait for the engine to cool and the traffic to lighten up.

When we finally got to the zoo I got to see animals that I had never previously seen before. The final exciting moment was when I almost had a head on because the one way road that I was driving on had turned into a two way street and I hadn’t realised (I may have also briefly forgotten that I wasn’t in Australia). I quickly swerved into the right lane, although I doubt that the driver coming in the other direction would have thought anything was amiss because people drive like that all the time in Guate. Finally I arrived home and fell into a deep worn out sleep.

The update on my car is that it was an electrical thing and the fan wasn’t working. I got it fixed this morning and it cost 100 Quetzales (about $15). In Australia most likely it would have cost about $100!