Call me call me any, any time.

I should probably be sleeping rather than doing this, but, shoulda-coulda-woulda, you know?

Lucero ( the maid who got fired ) is officially gone and has been replaced by the Latina look-alike of L. Frank Baum's Wicked Witch of the West. I'm serious. If her skin was painted green, I might be tempted to start clicking my heels. Rude to say? Maybe, but maybe I'm just a little bitter that I've been stripped of my forbidden fantasies. Sue me for being cynical. In a display of true power of will, I will admit that this one is a bit more friendly. Lucero was friendly, but getting a word out of her was like squeezing a rock for water. This one, whose name I can't recall, is the top-of-the-morning-to-you type who likes go Mary Poppins-style with the broom. It's pretty entertaining. Is it sad that I'm more engrossed with the maids here than anything else?

Moving on, I bought a cell phone today. There are two cell phone companies here in Chihuahua ( maybe in Mexico in general, but I don't know ) -- Telcel and something else. Telcel's the most popular one from what I gathered, so I swooped that one up. And it also turns out that pay-as-you-go phones are vastly more popular here than they were back home; a good thing because as far as my Spanish goes, there's no way I could possibly handle a monthly contract with formalities and subclauses and all that.

The most curious curiosity about cell phones here is that there's a special way to dial them. Cell to cell, house to house, house to cell and cell to house. Each has its own formula. It's odd. I'm going to have to write down all the combinations, because I can't manage to remember them all, even though I've been asked and been answered about a half a dozen times already. I know that one or two involves dialing a total of 13 digits, which is just plain ridiculous. As if ten weren't enough.

On a more important note, the one being behind purchasing a cell phone, I have a new career opportunity. The cell phone is just for the purpose of having a direct number through which I can be contacted ( I haven't fooled myself into thinking that I'm going to be using it to maintain a social life any time soon ). Luis's godfather is tutored in English every Monday, and he talked to his tutor about careers in Chihuahua that involve speaking English. As it turns out, Chihuahua's university is looking for native English speakers to assist teaching there. I'm not going to get my hopes up or anything, but.. okay, yes I am. I really hope it pans out. This whole Spanish-learning thing is stressing me out so much; it would be glorious to be able to have my work be the one thing that didn't involve that particular stress. Anyway, I'm calling the tutor guy back tomorrow for more information, so I'll see what happens from there.