Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Tropical freeze


Holiday Inn in San Juan/Isla Verde boasts of its tropical atmosphere, while, in reality it is overly air conditioned everywhere and its grand ballroom/biggest conference room is a huge refrigerator.

And I am here, since yesterday noon, freezing my extremities off, together with circa 50 fellow sufferers, wrapped in all clothes they brought, sweaters, jackets, woolen caps (some people, obviously knew what to expect, while others did not) even comforters!

I wonder what the tourists say: "I have been to Puerto Rico! Brrrrrr" ????

For me, personally it is not the end of suffering. I have unexpectedly been thrown into four twelve hour (!!!) days of advanced conversational Spanish, expected to discuss - intelligently, if possible - issues like "modelos y tipos de pobreza" and "descubrimiento social???"... or whatever... I can't really think in any language after 12 hours of that!

I knew I would have to discuss stuff like that... I just naively thought that I could do it in English, since it is a US government organized event. Silly me....

Good night, ladies and gentlemen, I am bushed... and frozen, and ... worst of all ... they serve an abundance of very tempting sweets FIVE times a day, so I better take some more insulin, again...

Two more days of frozen Spanish immersion from 7 am in the morning till 7:30 at night.
If I survive this ordeal I'll be back ... on Friday perhaps ???
Wish me luck, please.

5 comments:

pixie_dust said...

Good luck, oh Frost Queen:) I hate AC!!!

Minerva said...

thanks, pixie :-))) It was a bit warmer today in the conference room AND I had an entire HOUR of free time beetween meetings and dinner - enough to go defrost in a jacuzzi and even have a swim.
One more day of that and I'll be back to the tropics!

Raúl said...

me gusta mucho tu blog t visito todos los dias visita mi blog y deja un comentario de si t gusto o no y si quieres enlazamos nuestros blogs

Anonymous said...

What type of conference is it?

Minerva said...

it was - it just ended - a conference for people who work for non profit organizations here in PR.