Day 2

We started getting moved in. we rested a bit, unpacked a bit, walked around the Las Galeras we remembered a bit. We looked around for a wireless internet connection, with no success yet. At night – rather, dusk – a guard showed up at our house. He was an older-looking man in a tank top, a Chicago Cubs hat, and a machete on his belt. He is hired by Daniel / JuanYLolo to watch the properties at night. He has a face like a character from an older Warner Bros. cartoon – a very prominent overbite, and heavy eyebrows. He is gruff – a bit friendly, but not more than necessary. He – I think, as my Spanish skills weren’t anywhere sufficient enough to keep up with his non-tourist speaking speed - he was trying to impress upon us how necessary it is to not leave valuables lying around and to lock up. Amy told me this was correct. This required closing several bolt locks on two doors – the main, French door-type front door, and a side kitchen door. As it was our first night in a strange house, and we had been traveling for a couple days, so the kids were a little edgy – they were trying to figure out whether to sleep in separate rooms or in the same room (they chose to be in the same) and, then, which room. After we got it settled, we met the particular power issues of the region – there are regular outages, as the local remote power network has to change to another system for the night. This means 15 minute power outages at 6 and 9 o’clock. (I witnessed an unlucky person trying to write an e-mail in one of the local internet cafes at 6, and lose it as the power went out.) Benjamin was particularly jumpy – just as he was going to bed the 9 o’clock power outage occurred, and he started screaming as everything went dark. We calmed him down, only to have him start screaming again when the power went back on and the music from the local disco blared on again. We calmed him down again, and started getting ready for bed – we took the room downstairs, next to them until they get comfortable. As we got into bed, suddenly the front doors started banging violently – we thought someone was trying to break in. Benjamin started screaming again, which the rest of us probably felt like doing. It turned out the night guard was checking to make sure we had properly locked up. We assured him we had, but he was starting to scare us. As he walked around the house, he would look in windows, so we learned to close the shutters. We later complained to Daniel, via his girlfriend who stops by, about the weird night guard. He stopped being so vigilant, but he also became less friendly. We think we hurt his feelings.