It’s crunch time here in San Cristobal. All of the photogs are rushing to finish their stories, and we’re all rushing to finish our graphics and programming. We only have ONE WEEK left here! It’s so hard to believe that I’ve been away for three weeks.

It’s kind of weird here in that when I was in Costa Rica, I missed American things a lot more, but here, I don’t really miss anything other than my family and friends (oh, and American ketchup). I could seriously live here.

Lately we’ve been having weird brown-outs where part of the city loses power. Luckily, not all of it loses power at the same time. So when the power goes out at school, the power is on at the bars and at the hotel and vice versa. I’ve heard three different stories about why this keeps happening, but the most legitimate one is that the island is split into three grids. Normally each grid has a generator, but one of them went out awhile ago, and another one of them went out last month, so the island is taking turns using the power. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, though, when you consider that we didn’t have any issues with electricity before. We keep joking that running 20 MacBook Pros all day are crashing the grid.

A plan to the tortoise reserve in the highlands is in the works. Hopefully I’ll go before I leave. Everyone is rushing to finish so that we can have free time at the end of the trip to take day trips. A lot of people want to go to other islands, but I’ve already been to both Isabela and Santa Cruz, so there’s no need to spend the money on the boats. I’m looking forward to some beach time and venturing to the highlands.

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