Retarsia on Assignment: San Juan

So the past two weekends I've woken up at the crack of dawn on Friday morning, schlepped my tail over to the Tallahassee airport, and flown to San Juan, Puerto Rico to teach some MCAT classes. Last weekend was a bit of a blur - due to flight delays (thanks, American Airlines!) I got into San Juan a scant 7 hours late and missed that day's class. The boss took me and one of the other teachers to an Italian restaurant, a place called Via Appia (which I've walked on, mind you) which was pretty good. I wasn't expecting good Italian food in Puerto Rico, but I was proven wrong twice. The next day I woke up, taught two lessons, then had to haul ass to the airport to make a 4pm flight. Total time in airports: 10 hours. Total time in San Juan: 20 hours. Weak.

Fortunately this past weekend I got to have a bit more extended visit. I again woke up and took the early flight from Tallahassee to Orlando, but this time there was a twist. I flew Continental into Orlando, but was scheduled to fly Delta out of Orlando. This is where I developed an intense hatred of the Orlando airport (MCO) - to understand why, you need to know a bit about how MCO is structured. There's two major terminals, and they're separated by a quarter-mile stretch of indoor shops, bars, etc. The big problem is that if you come in at one terminal and depart from the other one (like I had to do) you have to take the tram from your terminal to the main ticketing/baggage claim area, walk to the other terminal's entrance, GO THROUGH SECURITY AGAIN, and then take ANOTHER tram to the second terminal's departure gates. Freaking ridiculous. So thankfully I had a solid 2.5 hours to get from gate to gate, but if you're in a rush, forget about it.

So after that hassle, I got to the gate, grabbed some lunch, then was off to San Juan at the proper time. The flight was nice and uneventful, and for once I had a pretty good seat. At this time I feel its necessary to plug SeatGuru, a site which compiles "seat reviews" for just about every major airline. You pick what airline and which plane, and it tells you what the best seats are. I will never get on a plane again without consulting that site first. Brilliant stuff. Anyway, the flight was a good one - they showed "The Last Mimzy", a pretty decent (children's) movie.

Once in San Juan I used my primitive Spanish skills to grab a cab and zip over to the office. I held a review session, then closed down the office and walked to my hotel. Unfortunately this is where something bad happened - after checking into my room I pulled out my phone to call my family to let them know I'd gotten in okay, and the damned thing was broken. I checked everything I could - battery, charger, screen - to no avail. I was phone-less. This was a problem as I needed to stay in touch with the boss (who would be in and out of the office all day) so I decided that what I needed was one of those GoPhones, a pre-paid cell phone. I went to a couple stores asking for them (again, in my primitive but good enough Spanish) and eventually found one. Is it a cheap piece of crap? Yes. Do I now have a phone with a Puerto Rican 787 number? Yes. Did it do what I needed? Absolutely.

I had some drinks and dinner at a little Puerto Rican-style diner called "Bebo's Cafe", then settled in for the night. The next morning/afternoon I cranked out two more Physics lectures, wished the kids good luck, then went to old San Juan with my boss and another teacher. We walked around, saw some sights and snapped some pictures, then proceeded to get smashed at a bar called "El Batey" off of Calle de Cristo. It was a fantastic place - a dive bar with great music, cheap drinks, and a really cool bartender. I sat there and enjoyed the cool breeze, drank mojitos and sangria and margaritas and icy cold Medallas (Puerto Rico's major beer). Just sitting there, talking about music, movies, and our similar religious views (or lack thereof) with my coworkers was one of the most relaxed, chill moments I can remember in my life. In a lot of ways it felt like a blast from the past - I felt the same way hanging out and drinking with friends when I studied in England. There's something great about being in a foreign place and feeling totally at home.

I'll more than likely be going back to teach again. If any of my friends want to join me there, let me know! It's a hell of a trip.

Calle de Neon?
Originally uploaded by thekingofretarsia

If you want to see more, I've got a photoset up on Flickr: San Juan Trips 1 & 2. Check out my other flickr photos while you're there.

On my lunch break...

Okay, just a brief anecdote from my lunch today:

I went into the Qdoba on Tennessee Street to get some lunch before work. For those of you not familiar with the place, it's a fast-food chain that specializes in those gigantic burritos and quesadillas. So I get to the end of the line, pay for my burrito, and ask the cashier guy if he can change one of the TVs to ESPN - nobody was paying much attention to that particular TV so I figured nobody would care. He said "no problem", I took my food to the table, and started eating.

Now about 10 minutes later two girls came through the line and this cashier, some smart-ass community college dropout, was laying on the game as best he could. I was within earshot so I could hear his vain attempts, all of which were hilariously bad. He then got the bright idea to "show off" for these girls. I heard him say "hey, watch this!" and he switched the TV over from ESPN to the Discovery Health channel. This normally wouldn't be a problem, but at the moment when he switched the channels there was a pretty graphic depiction of a slashed-open torso undergoing surgery. I looked up, thought "that sucks", shrugged, and went back to eating. (A couple years of working in the ER will do that to you - it's pretty hard to phase me.) Unfortunately for the table of women sitting a few feet from me, one of them couldn't handle the very graphic images and promptly vomited all over the table. Her friends then cursed a storm at the cashier kid, who looked like he wanted to curl up and die. I finished up and bailed - seeing the images on the TV and hearing/seeing the lady vomit wasn't enough to get to me, but nobody likes sitting around dealing with the smell of vomit.

Customer service is alive and kicking, I tell you!