Dura Vida

The messages finally came in and poor brian got his notice that he needed to get out of the country. As sad as it was, nobody could let this happen without doing something so the hostel threw a deportation party. The night was festive but with somber undertones. The guero just didnt taste as sweet and each imperial tossed back brought on more and more nastalgia. The night came to end with one final singalong of Old Crow's wagon wheel which is a tried and true favorite of any american country boy. The next morning I awoke and said my goodbyes before he boarded a taxi to the airport. The hostel has been a different place since, but it is keepin on and gearing up for a halloween party that should bring back the happy thoughts.

With the exception of the deportation blues, the last week has been pretty bland and basic. I have been waking up late to spend my days once again snooping around the internet to no avail. I had a few interviews scheduled this week but my tuesday interview was pushed back due to poor email correspondence. that being said, i tended to mope around the hostel not doing much of anything for the next few days. I have since kicked my sickness and am back to full speed. there is though, another hinderence to my mental state. It has been raining constantly with boisterous thunderstorms and the gutters have been overflowing on a regular basis which leaves you with a good five foot horizontal leap if you want to leave without going for a swim. Okay, five feet is doable, but the next challenge is a little more dicey. The five foot leap lands you directly in the middle of the street which is usally flooded with not just water but heavy traffic as well. if you can brave the floods and the cars, i guess you can leave. me however, resigned to staying inside and doing nothing but strummin the old geetar. I have actually become kind of a minstrel down here. pulling tunes out of the depths of my memory that I had thought i had forgotten long ago.

The other day within the hostel walls, i awoke to find that everything was pretty quiet. There were very few guests, and most of the employees were out. I took this change to grab my guitar and harmonica and set up shop in the extremely reverberant stairwell. I have wanted to do this for a long time but it always seemed like it would bother a lot of people. This morning however, if you happened to be int he hostel, you were subject to my noise. I made it through about one tune in the confidence filled stairwell before a guest who i thought had already left come walking through. He didnt have much to do and he is actually a musician in a band in puerto viejo so i coerced him into grabbing the hostel guitar and hangin out in the stairwel with me. we proceeded to kick out the tunes jamming and harmonizing for the next few hours. unfortunatley, our fun ran out when the guy busted a string on the hostel guitar. by this point, we had moved to the main room due to popular demand. the room had filled up a little bit and it was a bummer when he popped the string. conversation filled the room again I began to tell him the story of my guitar at the airport. I began this because he had popped the G string on his guitar. So i told him of trying to carry it on the plane and the guy who i was giving a lesson to that set all of those events in motion. When i was telling him about the guy tuning my guitar, i got to the part where he broke my string. I had had a few drinks at this point and was getting a little angry when telling the story so my voice had risen and when i got the part of the broken string, conversation from the rest of the room in some sort of social phenomenon, died out perfectly for me to bellow to this guy, "and the dude busted my G string!" The crowd, not paying attention before this comment quickly turned my way waiting for some sort of explanation. I fell silent and blushed like a little school girl. it took me a few seconds to regain my composure and clarify that it was ON MY GUITAR! BUSTED THE G STRING ON MY GUITAR! anyways, I have to go run some errands right now before the rain comes back, but there is much more to say so expect another post in the near future.