Livin Large

Mike and Britt had a date planned with their pastor and his wife on Wednesday night in the city, so naturally, I was booked for the babysitting job. However, the benefit was that we got to stay in a suite at the Sheraton for the night. Mike has a plethora of Starwood points from his carnie credit cards, which can be used at various hotels, so we got hooked up. The high life!

High-speed Internet, superior air conditioning, complimentary breakfast/coffee break/lunch/appetizer hour, a couple of English TV channels, robes and said garment's natural affiliate and most notable luxury...HOT water! Back at the ranch in El Zonte, since it's not an available luxury, the idea of taking a hot shower is appealing...although in actuality, due to the heat and humidity, it would lead to the unfortunate counterproductive phenomenon known as PSS. For those of you who don't speak acronym or are unfamiliar with this, that's "Post Shower Sweat." But with real air condidioning, this wasn't an issue in the hotel. Best shower ever!!! I went to town on the hot water. Just blasted my skin...don't think I even turned on the "F" aka, "Fria" knob. 3rd degree burns...totally worth it.

The unfortunate thing for me, was the availability of channels such as Playhouse Disney and Discovery Kids...in Spanish. As if the shows aren't bad enough in English, their Spanish equivalents are worse. At least when forced to watch them in English you can understand and pinpoint what it is that's annoying...in another language you are still fully aware that it's annoying, but can't even articulate why. You would think that I would welcome the break from watching the Doodlebops DVD every freaking day, but maybe I've become a closet fan, because I was actually wishing we were "dancing and singing" along with Deedee, Rooney and Moe rather than listening to Dora shout every word that comes out of her mouth. Seriously...something needs to be done about Dora's excitement level. She really needs to learn how to use exclamation points in moderation. Being bilingual is not cool enough to make up for the annoying lack of volume control.

And the last, but certainly not least, benefit of this trip to the city...SUBWAY...not once, but twice. We got it for lunch on the way into the city on Wednesday and then again for dinner (well...we got foot longs so we could save some for lunch the following day as well) on the way out on Thursday. And like my earlier post noted...if you've never been deprived of American food for long periods of time, you may not understand this excitement...but it's significant. One of my favorite parts of our Europe Semester DVD is the footage of 3 girls from our trip eating lunch at Hooters (which coincidentally, after watching "Big Daddy" in Spanish, translates "Melones") in Switzerland. They were caught...on film...in what could not have been a trashier, more cliche American restaurant. And yet we all understood how they were sucked in...familiarity..and those world famous wings.

So, that wasn't all that adventurous...but I will not apologize for enjoying it. And don't you worry...I'm not getting soft. I have a good adventure blog for you coming up, about my trip to La Libertad on the bus.