All that for only ONE DOLLAR (june 25)

This was a great day. It started off on a sour note because I woke up in a sour mood. I went for my normal morning run and took a longer route hoping it would help clear my mind some more. All it did was help my legs hurt some more, lol. The work day dragged by and it seemed COB would never come. By the time we left the office at 5:46 p.m. I was more than ready to be home. However, we had a full night ahead of us so I knew I wouldn't have time to "do me" for long. Yolanda was sick so she didn't accompany during my adventures tonight. The first stop was my coworker Diane's apartment (5 floors above us). She is going out of the country for the next 2 weeks and needed to clean out her refridgerator so she invited 3 folks over to help out. Clearly I had no problem doing that. We ate bruschetta, fajitas (chkn for them, veggies for me), pecan pie & ice cream topped off with delicious coffee. I hadn't had coffee in quite some time so this was an excellent way to end the evening. The conversation flowed very well in una mexcla de English & Spanish and I learned quite a bit about Embassy affairs and intergovernmental relationships. After dinner, I went to our weekly jazz night in Casco Viejo. There I met up with two of the ladies we'd met at Salsa lessons last week and who we went out to dinner with on Tuesday night. I also was introduced to a junior from UNC-Chapel Hill and a married couple. The wife was actually the artist whose work was on display at the gallery so that was a pleasant encounter. Her website is www.poetryandart.org if you'd like to see her work and hear her story. All of artwork is based on self-love and hope because she was raped and abused as a young woman and this is her way of expressing her feelings. A very interesting story and there's more details on the website. Anyways...After the extended jazz set (ended around 920 instead of 9) we all (6 of us) piled into the couple's Yaris (see picture below) and headed out to dinner. I didn't eat because I was still full from my dinner. Again, the conversation flowed very well and we learned about how the couple met and got married in 10 days and are happily living together still. After dinner (around 1115p), the couple dropped us off at a club on Calle Uruguay called Sahara. There was going to be a band playing live reggae starting at midnight. Pleasantly surprised, 5 of my coworkers were there already so we joined them and waited for the band to begin. They didn't take the stage until around 12:40a but the wait was well worth it. The majority of the songs were Bob Marley so I knew all of them and was really jamming!! Around 2:25 we left the club and the van dropped each of us at our respective locations. Reeking of smoke, I took a quick shower then fell quickly asleep. The only thing I paid the whole night was for my taxi from the apartment to the jazz- $1. I am truly going to miss this economy and being "the intern." :-)