apagones

so it all started last thursday... well, sort of. we lost power breifly at home. but not for too long. we packed up and headed to school for our evening classes. i had just got going when our director came around and told us that there was no water in the building and that for health and legal reasons we had to cancel class. okay, fine. so the next night i go in, ready to teach the exact same lesson from the night before (this class meets on tuesday, thursday, and friday evenings). we get about 15 minutes into the class - and the lights go out. everyone goes home.

saturday morning classes go fine. it was my day to bring my class to the computer lab. normally we have them do boring grammar exercises... but this is an advanced class and we're talking about conspiracy theories in the lesson, so i have them researching other theories. we're sitting there and there all looking up stuff, and another teacher asks me what they're doing. then she tells me that some people have a conspiracy theory of sorts regarding the blackouts. the last time there were nationwide blackouts was right around the time there was some big political something or other going on. and they've recently announced that they're going to have a referendum on cafta (the central american free trade agreement - which is called tlc here - not sure on the exact translation). hmmm. curious.

so in the paper we read (okay, so colleen read, i listened to her translation) that there have been some problems with energy and water for a while. they haven't had much water, which has slowed down the hydroelectricity production, and we were renting some power from panama, but they recently decided to stop renting to us. and then something happened with the water (thursday) and some sort of transformer or whatever blew up.

so. they were going to ration power, have scheduled blackouts for a while. and then a couple of days later they announced that they weren't going to do that, that some transformer or whatever (electricity vocab is clearly not my specialty) had been repaired and they were planning to bring some other thingy online as well. and then yesterday they changed their minds *again*. the blackouts are back on. so last night the power was out when i got to school. i had one student who was coming in early to make up an exam - which he took sitting next to the window in the dimming daylight. and then at 6 o'clock when the lights were still off class was canceled. again.

so colleen bought the paper this afternoon, which had a schedule in it for the blackouts. and apparently our school is scheduled to be out from 5-8pm tonight. which means our class will be canceled AGAIN. normally having no class due to a blackout would be kind of fun (and it was the first time it happened - we went out for some beers and had a good time). but this is the last week of classes. so really the students are supposed to be taking exams and doing their final interviews. PLUS i start my *new* job on wednesday, so i can't be making up classes at my old job when i'm supposed to be doing my new job.

oof. so in other news, i did go to my new school yesterday for a little orientation. i also met another new teacher, named nick. there's supposed to be a third new teacher - jasmine - and they're throwing a little bbq for us on sunday. so i'm kind of excited. i'm happy that the teachers at my new school seem to be interested in getting to know the new teachers (unlike my current school, where most of the teachers are costa ricans and therefore don't experience the same sort of settling in issues that foreigners do).

oh yeah, so my new word for the week: apagones.

blackouts.