Up ''dates''

In the end, I still haven't met Jesus so no date with him. I have, however, gone on two dates with Raul, but I must admit that I am ruthlessly using him for his Spanish. It's shameless, really, we've gone to have a coffee once and dinner once and I talk to him and he talks to me. Here they'd call me a sinvergüenza.

And now today, I am going to the dentist he recommended to me. I had told Raul my misgivings about the dentist I'd seen before, one being the hygiene of her operation, and as one of his jobs is as an emergency technician I thought I could trust his recommendation. Although they just sent me to get x-rays, which is fine, but they had me get the whole dang mouth done, which makes me wonder if I had a dollar sign stamped on my forehead when I walked in to make the appointment earlier today. Well, whatever he says, I can take my x-rays and go wherever I want. As an aside, while waiting for my x-rays I am across the street in an internet cafe where you can pay three times more per hour (though still only about $1.50) to have your own private booth for surfing the web. Eew.

Okay, I have just returned from my actual dental visit, and the man is a character. He is about 60 and very talkative. He and his wife are really trying to sell me on seeing a folklore performance in 2 weeks here in Xela on the history of the marimba, which is a xylophone type instrument. There will be children dancing and singing from all parts of Guatemala. Unfortunately, I will be out of town by then. His grandfather is Basque, from the region of San Sebastian, but he was born in Guatemala himself. His son, who is a dentist in Guatemala City, has some of the most advanced and expensive equipment, but it's not worth it to have that kind of stuff in a more provincial town like Xela because people are afraid of it and prefer the old style. Anyway, he told me that the treatment plan of the first dentist I'd visited two weeks ago here in Xela, where they drill a hole and leave it open while the infection drains, is like 10 or 15 years outdated. For the past 2 weeks, I have been stuffing cotton in my tooth hole after every meal, and I should have had my root canal last Friday, 5 days ago, but I'd canceled the appointment, planning to have the root canal done in GC. It had started to hurt again, though, so I went to the dentist today to look into my cotton stuffed tooth and we hatched a plan where tomorrow he is going to clean it throughly, and fill it with some temporary junk to keep it clean and sealed from food and drink invasion. This temporary fix is going to cost me about $65, so prices are higher than the last dentist and her antiquated techniques, but still very inexpensive by US dental standards. Next week I am going to see his colleague in GC, an expert in root canals. Not his son, who is more of a specialist in orthodontia. So that is the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth, and I will let you know how the hole thing works out with the dentist in GC.

For now, I have about 5 more days here in Xela, I'm planning on leaving Sunday afternoon or Monday morning. The big news is that the baby my ex-maestra Lucky is adopting was born last Friday, but is jaundiced and was born with pneumonia, and therefore is in the hospital until this upcoming Friday. During our lessons together she'd been debating between naming the baby Montserrat (Moncie, for short) and Anel, but when I suggested Anel might be a bit too close to anal she quickly settled the name issue and hasn't looked back. So this Saturday I am going to hang out with her and the new new new baby. Now I am going to meet her friend Lilia to help her prep for her TOEFL, and then Lucky will join us when she gets done with her afternoon student, who happens to be the dutch student who just moved into my household here, and who Lucky thinks is a twerp. We're going to Casa Babalon, which is a place where you can get hummus and baba ghanoush here in town, so life hasn't been too deprived here in Xela, even if the neighborhood of the school and my home did not have running water for a large portion of the day yesterday. Everyone when discussing this always mentions that the Japanese have been in charge of the water pipe system here for the past couple of years, but so far no one has really delivered a statement about whether things are worse or better than they were before. But whatever the water situation happens to be for the day, it definitely has something to do with the Japanese.