The slow creeping days of vacation I´ve been warned about are here. I miss my family and watching my host family get together with all the awkward moments, old stories and inside jokes doesn´t make things easier. Not being particularly emotional, I tried getting really drunk instead which resulted in nothing more than embarrassment and a very difficult run the next morning--training for a half marathon an hour south of me in the Ithsmus-Bound Cordillera Isabella.

I´ve spent plenty of time calling my counterparts and looking for new work with coffee cooperatives, the harvest of which has begun. I though I would see only an increase in work due to my connection with a large coffee exporter, but the opposite has been true. I woke up at four thirty in the morning to take a four hour bus ride for a ten o´clock meeting with a cooperative coordinator. How did that pan out? He wasn´t in the office that day. I called and or showed up at the coffee exporter office four days in a row. What happened? My counterpart was not in or did not call me back. I tried to take a two hour bike ride over a mountain with a faulty bike to find a friend to get my new phone´s user code. Where did I end up? Sleeping in his bed waiting for enough sun to ride back and talking to him on the phone because he wasn´t there.

Other than that, I´ve had a lot of time to run, yoga and read. I´ve been running through books faster than I ever have and listening to the same CDs over and over again. It reminds me of the Christmas breaks of the past sans Starwars on constant repeat. Oh and I´m wearing shorts right now.