Apagón: blackout. This is a word I became intimately familiar with this week. Quite honestly, I don’t think the Puerto Rico experience this week would have been complete without it. As I sat comfortable and cool in the other students’ Airbnb, eating ice cream cake and watching The Great British Baking Show, everything fell dark. The entirety of San Juan lost power, leaving us without light, entertainment, and most importantly, air conditioning. We spent the next couple hours laying on the tile, our only source of respite from the heat, exchanging stories and singing. Strangely enough, it was one of my favorite nights here. I finally went home and slept on my kitchen floor until power returned in the middle of the night. The apagón wasn’t glamorous (and there are many more deeply rooted issues associated with it), but we made the most of it.
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Research has finally picked up! I’m elated to, at last, report I’ve had something of success this week. The start of the summer semester was largely the remedy to all my recruitment issues. I was able to attract people to my table to talk about my study, have professors tell their students about the research, and talk to a couple classes myself. I was in constant communication with potential participants this week. It was a little overwhelming to have dozens of people suddenly asking for more information compared to the near silence of the past few weeks, but it was also exciting and rewarding! I booked an almost full week, and next week is completely filled up as well. This wouldn’t be one of my blogs if there wasn’t some catch, though. The apagón caused me to cancel two sessions, and I had another unrelated cancellation as well. Even with losing three participants, it was the liveliest week for research yet. I’m happy to finally spend the majority of my working time conducting my study, rather than searching desperately for participants. I’ve also been keeping up with coding for the picture naming and verbal fluency tasks. It’s been interesting to see the patterns of the dialect here.
A view from El Morro in Old San Juan
Although I was very busy with research this week, I still had lots of fun experiencing Puerto Rico when could. On Sunday, we went to an event called Cocolandia at the museum. There, we took a salsa class, saw a traditional parade, and watched dancing with live music. Gabriella and I also tried mofongo for the first time. It wasn’t the most well-made, being from a food truck, but I still liked it. The whole day was so much fun! Of course, we also went out to our Tuesday night salsa class. The instructor is the most entertaining part of it all. Gabriella and I are really attuning our basic skills, but the partnering is still pretty disastrous and, frankly, embarrassing. Either way, we have so much fun at salsa nights! Later in the week, we went to see Inside Out 2 at the movie theater in Plaza las Américas, which is the largest mall in the Caribbean. To end the week, a few of us headed to Old San Juan for some walking, shopping, and eating. I tried another mofongo, this time with ropa vieja. It was delicious, and I was left unbelievably full.
I had a great week, and I’m looking forward to what comes next. Onto the home stretch!
The good mofongo!!!
The not-as-good (though adorable) mofongo