It’s Library Day in San Carlos and we have a stack of books to drop off, hopefully some new books to select. We’ve both been devouring books at a rate of three or four a week. Have hardly watched TV at all, even though there are plenty of shows and movies in English with Spanish subtitles. And we’re paying the big bucks to the cable company so we can get Internet access and use Vonage and Skype for our phones.
After the library we go to Guaymas to pay the rent. Since the postal system here is so unreliable, bills are paid in person. There’s a machine at Ley Center where we pay the electric bill, very high-tech, although the bill comes to us stuffed in the iron gate on our porch. Same with the water bill, which we pay here at the water company. The cable must be paid on the tenth of the month, and we receive no bill. It’s incumbent on us to remember, and if we don’t pay on time they first turn off our internet access and then that same day the cable guy drives up in his VW bug with the ladder on top and climbs the pole in front of our house to disconnect us. We found this out the hard way, after the local office failed to post our payment.
When Charlie and Alma came over for dinner a couple of weeks ago she told me she really needed an Al-Anon meeting, but doesn’t want to go to the one in Guaymas because she gets off at 2, the meeting doesn’t start until 4, and she just wants to go home. So I made arrangements at JC’s restaurant for the little room behind the counter, where AA meets a couple of times a week. We had our first Tuesday evening meeting this week and it seemed to go very well, despite the fact that I could understand very little that was said. Does it matter? What matters is that it was said. The participants are professional women and business owners who can’t get to the 10am Wednesday meeting, all considerably younger than the Wednesday group, and are much better at English than I am at Spanish. Maureen and I shared in English and I don’t know how much they understood us either, although Terry, who owns a fabulous gallery in town, speaks English without even an accent.
So I will continue to go to the meetings and hope that gradually I begin to understand more. And hope the affection I feel for them will show through my inability to communicate.
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