Day 54

OK, McDonald's is a pretty classy place in Lima, especially in McCafe (do we have those in the states?). Once again, it served as a comfort to me after an unfruitful battery search. My morning commute to school was especially crowded, and I don't know why. And the Cooster (medium-sized bus) I was on seemed to not have as many bars to hang on to, so I pretty much fell on two people on the bus ride. And someone stepped on my toe and popped the blister that I had gotten from playing soccer in the sand on Sunday (sorry if that grosses you out). Then I got to school and discovered that the coffee machine (it's like a coffee dispenser thing -- really cool) was broken, so I had to stick to the sucky instant coffee from the window in the cafeteria. After class, I tried to make my way to a larger cell phone store on Javier Prado (opposite direction from our apartment), where Meredith assured me there would be cell phone batteries, but the cell phone model was too old. So I went back to Plaza San Miguel to the same place, and they said that they didn't have them and that I'd have to come back in the afternoon because apparently someone comes by at 4 p.m. that has a lot of cell phone batteries. Again, frustrated, I went to McCafe to cheer me up. I went home, had lunch with the roommates (said my first prayer in Spanish, which only lasted about 30 seconds, but still...), and was quite inspired to look into job possibilities for when I get back to San Diego and work on my resume. Then I went to English class with Dave Block, and it went really well. I'm really enjoying everyone there -- they all just have such good attitudes about learning English. On the way home, while driving through Callao, we got pulled over for a routine document check. Unfortunately, Dave forgot his driver's license at home, so we had to pull over and he had to go to the cop's car. Usually, cops ask for bribes, or they have the ability to confiscate your car and give you a ticket if you don't have your license. The cop ended up being really chatty actually -- Dave told him about the English class, and also understood that he broke the law and that he was willing to go to the police station and pay a ticket and everything. Amazingly, the guy didn't do anything -- not even a ticket. It was so awesome! I told Dave about the owl incident -- it being so close to being inside the house -- and he suggested purchasing an air gun from the market for 18 soles. He thought that would be more effective than Meredith and Racquel's intimidation techniques of sticking a stuffed animal dog out the window and yapping at it, or throwing tennis balls at it (and inadvertently hitting cars in the parking lot and setting off the alarm).