Tom's on his way!

Here in Pedernales waiting for Tom to arrive. His bus gets here at 3 or 4 am, so I've booked a hotel ($10 a night) that's directly in front of where he gets off so he can't possibly get lost (right?) even though he knows basically zero spanish to my knowledge. I'll wait up for him and let him in as soon as he gets here. Then we'll catch a bit of sleep and head to the ranch to work for Pedro (I work in Cojimíes every day but Sunday and Thursday, when I work with Pedro on the ranch... last week, Mariana and I roped cattle and tattooed numbers in their ears (or tried to anyway... good times.)

Marcelo's off giving a couple European tourists (Janneke and Maria) that are staying at the hotel a tour of some wildlife reserve today and tomorrow... Machu Chindul, I think it's called - he invited me to come along, but since I'm here waiting for Tom, he said he'd take him and I a bit later. The gringas are really nice, and are on a 9 month long program that revolves around what sounds like a pretty intense service project in Milagro, Ecuador.

Since Marcelo wasn't here today, I had the afternoon off to hang out with some niños, who went crazy with my camera, and took a lot of great pictures... until I found later that someone had deleted about half of them accidentally, and almost all of the rest were taken while the camera was in video mode... so there's almost nothing of value left, unfortunately. One or two came out well, though, so hopefully I'll be posting them soon.

Sofia told me today that there's been a noticeable improvement in my spanish, but I still can't understand 50% of what people are saying to me, haha. I guess I've still got some time to improve, but I'm not sure what effect Tom's arrival will have on this... I'll be speaking English more again, but I'll have to translate for him as well, so maybe it'll all balance out.

Tom, Sofia, and I have been invited on a fishing trip Monday afternoon, can't wait!