March 9th

Tuesday March 9

I went to the NGO again today. We got there 15 minutes early and she got there about 15 minutes late. Luckily her daughter brought us into her hair salon, so we had somewhere comfortable and cool to sit. I petted one of the 3 cats that are always around there while she napped under two pillows set up to make a little hut on the couch. She was adorable, moving around to make me pet different parts of her. The two others were there too, sleeping in another chair, touching.

The meeting went well. We exchanged a bit more information and now my job is to go home and do the online tutorial for the website management, and get started on my search for places that could give funding. I’ll be doing my work from home tomorrow instead of going in.

I took pictures of punch buggies on the bus today for about 15 minutes or less and must have seen about 30, only including the ones that could be seen on my side of the road (from my window). There are an unbelievable number of them here, especially in the south of the city, where 2-4 are parked on almost every block that has cars on it. I noticed the large number of punch buggies before, but only really realized just how many there were after explaining the concept of “punch buggies” to Argenis. I quickly had to stop punching him after about 5 minutes. Then the game changed into “spot the punch buggies” which was more fun than constantly pounding someone. He pointed out that the game might work better here in Merida if you punch someone when you see a block that doesn’t have a punch buggy on it.

On the way home I saw two giant iguanas and took pictures and videos of them. The neighbours now probably think I’m insane. Oh well. My neighbours in Canada would probably think the same, since I take pictures of pigeons and squirrels there too!

Getting off the bus at the appropriate time to get to the NGO is nearly impossible. There are no visible markers, and the bus takes a different route all the time to get to that street. I’m not looking forward to doing it on my own. Hopefully I won’t have to soon.


Finally, later tonight I got bad news from home about my grandmother (on my mom's side). She is incredibly ill. I hope she knows that I am thinking of her and how much I love her.