Panama Update #45
Sept. 10, 2008
The last 2 days have been fairly routine, although everyday is a little bit different. Nikki is still out of town but expected back tomorrow (Thursday , Sept. 11) morning for 3 days before returning to the research vessel for another week. There is a whole list of things that we need to take care of during the couple of days that she is here and I am sure she has a lot of things to catch up on in her office. Yesterday she emailed me the abstract for a conference in San Francisco where she is scheduled to present some research. The abstract had a hard deadline of September 10 and she could not submit it from the ship. I guess she cannot access web sites from the ship, but can only send messages to the marine superintendent who then can forward it to me. So she sent me all the directions for submitting it, which is a bit complicated. I hope I entered all the data correctly because it said in the directions that it cannot be changed after September 10, which is the day before she gets back. This is all new territory for me, but I am trying to be available to help her as needed, since at this point my schedule is much easier going. I still enjoy the English tutoring a lot, but I am noticing that clients come and go, so some days are busier than others. I am still looking into the possibility of finding a part time job at a school, tutoring for a couple days a week, but for the most part every school is set on hiring full-time or not at all. I think it has something to do with the work permits. They have to pay some costs for a work permit so they want to make sure they are getting as much out of the person as possible. On the other hand, 2 or 3 tutoring clients can come along at any time, so I may wait for that. In the meantime I am catching up on some reading, writing and studying Spanish. I have been studying Spanish mostly by watching TV, especially the cartoons. I think it actually helps a lot because I am able to understand a lot of what they are saying, more so than when I got here 2 months ago. Today the woman who cleans the halls in our dorm was talking to me quite a bit and I surprisingly understood all that she was saying. Her daughter is actually interested in taking English tutoring from me and we were trying to work out the details of how much she has had before, why she wants to learn more, and where we would meet. I gave her my number in case the daughter decides to do it so she can call me directly.
