the party's over

I write to you from the night before my post-grad unemployed streak ends. I'm really excited to get back in the classroom again, but I will be a little sad to see the lazy days go. The past couple days have been a whirlwind. Friday morning I got up and wandered around the city a little bit just to get the lay of the land on my own. Much to my pleasure, the whole city is laid out on a grid so unlike Paris, Amsterdam, various parts of Atlanta, it's really hard to get lost here. Which, as we all know, my sense of direction is my greatest asset as a person...not. So needless to say, I'm liking the city already. I wandered toward the town center, stopping in a couple old churches to admire the architecture - the churches here are gorgeous and are filled with very intense icons and statues. As I wandered I could see a set of ruins on the other side of town and so I ambled over that way to find el Museo del Santa Hermano Pedro which for a mere 5Q featured a museum dedicated to Brother Pedro, who was very influential in Antigua for his work with the sick and poor, and the ruins of an old church next to it. After long and hard consideration, I thought it was probably worth spending the seventy five cents-ish to go in. And indeed it was well worth it. The ruins gave me a gorgeous view of Antigua's surroundings and a pretty solid way to kill my morning.
Once I had seen all that I could see I wandered back toward my side of town. With a growling stomach and rain clouds looming in the horizon I opted to grab myself a quick lunch and head back to the house. That's the thing with Antigua is the weather changes an absurd number of times during the day. Wake up, it's pants and a sweater cold, middle of the afternoon, shorts weather, right around mid afternoon, raincoat weather, and then we go right back to pants and sweaters. It's a little ridiculous. But, I do love a good rain so I really can't complain. I've found that there's nothing better than sitting in the hammock strung out across our porch and reading a book as the rain pours down next to you. And that is exactly how I spent the remainder of my afternoon - which I know sounds a little lame, but with so many classes to teach this semester I've been trying to get ahead of the game with all of the novels that I'm teaching.
That evening the roomies took me for a night on the town.Tom in his ridiculous leather boots and JP and I in scarves - I honestly don't know why that turned into a thing but somehow it did. Since they're the only people I know in the country thus far, we've spent a lot of time together the past few days and developed a really quality baby sister and mother dynamic. They tease me like a little sister and look at me to hold their wallets so that they don't lose them after a few too many beers. Turns out, with a little bit of booze in them, their yoga poses get even more ridiculous and they can't keep up with any of their possessions. I can't even tell you how many times I uttered the phrase, "desculpa me, mis amigos son idiotos". Bless.
On Saturday morning we all woke up late and made very little effort to do anything productive except, of course, finding a way to stream the Auburn v. Arkansas game. I honestly thought that I wouldn't care about keeping up with SEC football after I left the country, but have since discovered that ignoring football season isn't really an option for me any more. I guess I did drink enough of the SEC Kool-Aid while I was down there. By the time Auburn was put on a weather delay (really, you guys can't play in a little bit of lightning?) Tom, our non-football fan, was getting antsy, so we wandered into the mercado to grab a little bit of dinner and then find a bar with ESPN so that we could watch the LSU game. By some stroke of luck that I still don't understand, while we were walking to the bar a carload of JP and Tom's friends who were coming to meet us happened to pass us on the street. I thought the boys were going to wet themselves with excitement as they made plans to meet at Reds, one of the few places in Antigua that will broadcast SEC football. For the next few hours we sat and I met the roomies' friends until they got bored of American football and insisted that we leave. From there the night is a blur of location after location after location. We must have covered most of the city bouncing around. Finding other friends in one bar, meeting a University of Tennessee grad and University of South Carolina grad at the next bar - both of whom were very excited to meet and argue football with a couple of other SEC fans (but really, what is there to contest when you compare them to Auburn?), then finding the same guys at the next bar, and finally (with a little push from my tired and wet - did I mention that it was raining too? - self) back to our place with JP and Tom, and I suppose mine now, friends in tow. So far everyone I've met has been really sweet and I'm looking forward to seeing more of that crowd. Now, for the rest of the weekend, i.e. Sunday, I'll leave that up to your imagination because aside from a quick brunch and some reading, I really accomplished nothing all day. And because my alarm is going off at 5:40 am tomorrow morning, I'm signing off for now to fall asleep to the dulcet tones of my neighbor's snorting (I'm talking about the pigs, not Tom's snoring)  First day of school tomorrow, I sure hope the other kids like me!
Buenos noches!
C.