Reading

The hostel has some great places to relax with a book.  First of all, there are four hammocks hanging from some nice shade trees in the large courtyard of the hostel.  When it rains we have to take the hammocks down so they don't get wet, which can be a challenge because some of the hooks are just at the height of my fingertips when I stand on tip-toes.  But the bigger challenge is hanging the hammocks again because the hooks are attached to strings, and the strings get twisted, and are all different lengths, so if you don't hang the right hammock from the right pair of hooks they end up too high or too low.  A few days ago I was helping Silvia hang the hammocks after a storm, and try as we might we just could not get all four of them to be at an appropriate height.  Another coworker saw us struggling and came to assist us, laughing at our failed efforts, but she too ultimately failed.  We ended up with 3 hammocks at a good level, and the other one - the blue one - ridiculously high.  As our other coworkers noticed they kept coming by the reception and asking, "Who hung those hammocks?"  "What? All three of you and you still couldn't get it right?"  There have been quite a lot of jokes in the past few days about climbing in the blue hammock.  So when I went to read today I decided to give it a shot.  I managed to get in it, ending up face down and shimmy-rolling over without flipping the hammock in the process.  Silvia came by and applauded me! 

The other great option for reading is on the deck of the pool.  I did that twice in the past week and got noticeably tanner quite quickly. 

In the US you might say I'm kind of a book snob because I read almost exclusively books in Spanish or Portuguese, and I don't like reading anything that has been translated.  Right before coming here I accidentally read "The Secret Life of Bees" in Spanish, and it was so awkward to visualize racial struggles and black southern women in South Carolina while reading in Spanish.  When I travel I really enjoy reading books that take place wherever I am.  I got really in to Mozambican literature when I was there, and then Brazilian, and now Argentinian authors.  I joined the library here, but then it ironically closed for the summer - so much for promoting literacy development when kids aren't in school.