greetings from the dentist's office

Fun fact: touch-typing blows Dominicans´ minds. The students in the lab basically think that I am a witch because I can type so fast without looking at the keyboard. It draws a crowd. I try to hype the new software I´ve installed, telling them that if they practice using TypingMaster 2000 they, too, can type with mystical speed, but so far it hasn´t caught on yet.

I´m hoping to go use the Internet today after I leave the lab. The Internet center only has 4 computers so it can be a little hard to get a spot. It´s basically my town´s Studio 54. (Exciting note! The Internet cafe's inversor--backup power supply--was broken and the power was out, so I decided to act on a tip one of the nuns had given me and see if I could find the other Internet center that apparently opened up. I got thrown because I thought it was BY the dentist's office, but it turns out it IS the dentist's office. I mean, it used to be the dentist's office--there aren't drills or anything here now--but they haven't changed the sign. This new place, despite the lack of advertising, is nicer and faster than the old one! Hurrah!)

I had a pretty mild weekend; I spent a lot of it at the school observing the community technology classes. I´ve been asked to go help teach, but this is hard, since the teacher herself does not teach. The students are meant to work out of a book of exercises, but roughly half of them spend their time playing Solitaire. The teacher walks up and down the aisles, carefully watching them play Solitaire. Since she doesn´t see fit to tell them to stop, I definitely don´t feel like it´s my place to do so. But since they´re not actually doing any work, they don´t need any help. They´ve got Solitaire pretty under control.

Saturday night I ate dinner at the convent. The nuns gave me a peanut butter sandwich and I was so happy! Peanut butter, the staple of poor American vegetarians (and children) costs like $6 a jar here. Then I came home and dramatically broke my host family´s refrigerator.

I opened it to get some water and the entire door fell off. Then the freezer door fell off, too. I awkwardly tried to hold everything up until my host sister came to help. We ended up getting everything propped back into place and leaned a ladder against the fridge to keep it shut. Unfortunately, my Don was still away on the couples retreat, so we just had to leave the refridgerator shut until he came back--no cold drinks, dairy products, or fruit for 24 hours. Fortunately, when he came back he was able to fix it.