old man jisseppii

this morning i had a student at 10:30am. after our class i asked her if my next student was in the office. she said, "no, he's on vacation". ok. he didn't let me know, but it's not a big deal because i'll still get paid. then i asked her if she saw my 12:30 student in the office. she didn't, so i left the building at 11:45am.

for 45 min I just walked around on some side streets in centro (business district). i was happy i did. i found a cute shoe store with well made shoes, but didn't buy any. i also ran across 'tango shoe alley'. there was a cluster of tango shoe stores. i don't tango but i do like to admire beautifully made shoes. all of them were so colorful and well designed. i also walked past a restaurant that looked to be organic. i'm keeping it in mind for my first B.A. visitor next week!

at 12:30 i called my student instead of going to his office. i had a suspicion he'd cancel. sure enough he did. after i hung up i was sure my 2pm student would cancel too so i walked around until i found a 'locutorio' (a place to make phone calls and check the internet). indeed, my 2pm student canceled so I headed home. (just 1 peso to take a peep at my email)

when i got home i walked my dirty clothes to the 'lavenderia' . i'm surprised they didn't walk themselves. Then I tried to start scheduling my thursday classes. i also texted my boss. she still hasn't paid me for february. i know it's because i haven't been on her butt about it. she finally called me back to arrange a meeting for wednesday. she's going to give me more students and pay me. (she didn't mention the paying part until i reminded her)

i've finally got the umph to put my butt in gear to find contract work / freelance work. i love my life here, but i'd really like more of a financial safety net and i want to come home for a visit this august. the only way i'll come home is if i have some work that trickles some money into a bank account. i also want to go clothes shopping!!! there are these cute cute cute brown leather boots that i want for the winter, but i won't buy them if i don't find some u.s. dollars.

at 6:30 tonight i met my first private student. he is a business man who has his own business. tomorrow he is traveling to meet with an english speaking client. he wanted to practice english and brush up for 2 hours. he was a pleasure to speak with. he said he never took a formal english lesson; he's self taught. his english was amazing for never speaking with a native speaker and being self taught. he asked me to speak at normal speed with him and he was able to understand. i enjoyed speaking with him. we talked mainly about project planning. it brought me back to my grad school days. 2hrs = 60 pesos

when i got home i pulled out jisseppii. jisseppii is my laptop computer from 7 years ago. he's 70 years old in computer age. i plugged him in and booted him up. 10 min later he was ready to go and whining. ever since i had him, the fan whines to cool him off. it's an annoying sound, but it is strangely comforting to me. i've started to redesign my professional website. i crashed dreamweaver 6 or 7 times (not even doing anything challenging). then i put him down to go into the kitchen to make tea. when i came back into the living room i picked him up to put him on my lap and then he crashed. he's really showing his age, but i still love him. we've been through a lot together. i have a strange attachment to him.

i'm not using my new computer to re-design my website because i don't have the software i need to get the job done, so i'll be ruff'en it with jisseppii until a contract project comes along that enables me to purchase the needed software.