Woohoo!

I was planning on writing this last night but the power went out. You know what's lots of fun? The power going out at 4:30pm in a country where it gets dark at 5pm. Let's just say I went to sleep real early last night. (power came back on about midnight)

It's funny because power outages totally make me nostalgic. When I was growing up our power went out about every other week. It was just normal. Since we went camping a lot we had a gas stove to cook on. It also reminds me of how my dad would always lecture us about leaving the fridge door open for too long while the power was out. He'd always say "don't let the penguins out!" Well one night I had a dream that I accidentally left the door open and the penguins came out with knives and were trying to kill me.

I'm on a tangent here...

Good news- just got an email from my mom that the IRS says I don't owe them anything!! Woo! They sent me a letter a few months ago saying I owed them around $1000. Well after looking through it, I didn't owe them $1000 but I did owe them about $300. I sent in all this evidence proving I didn't owe them all that money, although I was still prepared to owe around $300. Well now I guess they decided I don't owe them jack squat. HOORAY!

More good news- my dad and his wife are planning on visiting! I'm so excited. His wife has never been to CR before and my dad visited me a long time ago when I was studying abroad here. He told me he originally wanted to come from Sun-Sat but I told him he has to come over a weekend if he wants my SO and I to travel with him. I mean I'm not going to take 4 days off of work! And my SO can't take that much time off. So he's going to look at different days.

More more good news- I was planning our Cuba trip for July 5-14. I was crossing my fingers and hoping my SO had enough vacation days to take off that much time. Well turns out he has FOURTEEN vacation days. So we're going to go from July 5-16!! I'm so excited!

I've been doing lots of Cuba research and I definitely want to go to Varadero, the pristine white sand beach. Almost the entire area is all-inclusive hotels. I just read a little article on Lonely Planet about not staying at the all-inclusive places, and how you get to see the culture, get a more homey feel, etc. Screw that noise. Look, I'm all about culture and we'll see plenty of it the rest of our trip. But in Varadero I want to wake up with a mojito in one hand and a margarita in the other. I want to eat ice cream all day and laze around on the beach. Then drink more booze. The resorts are only about $100/night which is a freaking deal for all-inclusive. I plan to drink at least $60/night of that in mojitos. We'll probably only stay two nights, and since the rest of the time we'll be at casa particulares which are about $20/night I think it's totally worth it.

I also did a really great job of crunching numbers and found out a tour is actually MORE expensive than going by ourselves. I found a much cheaper ticket to Cuba, which brought down the price a lot. Plus all the tours only go for 4 days or so, which is just not enough time. When I showed my SO that us going alone would actually be cheaper (by about half!) he said "and that's why I married you" Damn straight.

Work is going well, finally, I love my science and bio classes. But I am super uncomfortable in my English class. I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know how to teach it. It's just awkward. I'll probably go talk to the director soon about it. I don't want to go too soon since I've been doing lots of complaining and if I keep complaining too much then they won't help me out as much, ya know?

I talked to my mom last night (before the power went out) and she said she's buying a whole bunch of blueberry bushes. Evidently they're for her "grandchildren". Blueberry bushes grow really well in my home state. In Spanish there is no word for "blueberry". Well I guess technically there is, but it's the same word as "cranberry" which is obviously a very different fruit.

Now I want blueberries.

Well I gotta go and get planning for next week. Everyone have a good day!