27/09/05 10.15pm

I'm not much in the mood to write, but today was a fine day. Nikkie trained me for the bar job and I pretty much have the hang of it so far. I get to pick the music, tonight was Tom Waits, My Morning Jacket, Air, Finley Quaye. We also watch a movie every day at 4pm, and today was O, Brother.We're entering the slowest two months of the year, but already tonight we have some guests and some of the local gringos came by to get some drinks and shoot some stick. I got to play two games. Everyone is extremely friendly and I'm slowly picking up on the drama in Uvita.This morning I woke up at 8:15am and hung around until 9:30 or so translating the paper, chatting with Jack, and attempting the crossword puzzle. Camille picks up the one copy of La Nacion that they have delivered for him up the street. Nikkie and I went to the bank, and by bank I mean a guy at a desk that exchanges money (though he does have a computer). There's no safe, he simply keeps the money under his desk on a shelf. We ran into Jamie at the bank, and the next customer that walked in rode up on his horse. Nikkie seems to know everyone in town. We also walked to the grocery store across the bridge, and saw some wreckage of the river flood. Some houses were damaged (completely) and there were bamboo shoots carried and dropped from up the mountain. (Said bamboo forest is just up the road from here - I'm looking forward to checking it out. I'm a bit exhausted now, so the gist of everything that happened today is that I worked the bar tonight and it is cake (though high season will probably bring a bit of a challenge). I met some of the local gringos, Dave, Steve, Ron, Adam. Dave plays guitar, and there's an open jam on Thursday. Camille was a steward on private yachts for some time and I am thinking of doing that from April - August before I go to NY, but it's just a thought. He said it's about $3,000/month and I could get a job rather easily. He said he'll give me more info.It's difficult for me to check my e-mails because the computer is not open when I have free time. We only have 56k dialup here, and one phone line for the entire hotel. Steve is working on getting a 128 modem installed so that may help. Once I get into my set schedule it may become easier but for now I need to concentrate on doing a good job. I wish I had more time and flexibility to keep in touch, and hopefully soon it will be possible. I move into the cabina on Thursday and I can't wait to set it up and settle in. Until tomorrow...ciao.