For the past three days there has been a little donkey (about 4 feet tall) standing on the street just around the corner from the dorm. I've walked by several times each day and seen him, so he's putting in a lot of hours standing there in the hot sun. He's got a crappy two-wheeled cart hooked up to him, and it's full of a bunch of crappy odds and ends, so I feel sorry for him. Especially since the cart is taller than he is!
Today I went to a meeting about finding volunteer projects to take part in. The lady there gave us a list of about 50 organizations to check out, so I'll be going through that in the next couple of days. Then I went to the cafeteria to eat with David, where I had chicken stuffed with ham and cheese, noodles, and watermelon. After that we went to another organizational meeting, this time about conversations with Spanish-speakers (I don't really know what to call it). What you do is meet with one or more other people from Mexico that want to learn English better, and practice talking English and Spanish with them, and hopefully make friends while you're at it.
I tried printing some stuff at the computer cluster today, and had some difficulties. Actually, I first tried yesterday right before class, but couldn't completely figure it out in the little time that I had. Apparently they have the same system that NDSU has been struggling to implement for the last year, where you go to a computer by the printer to confirm that you want to print what you just queued up from your computer. But to queue anything up, you have to sign in, which my neighbor in the cluster was kind enough to show me how to do. So I get that figured out, and then head over to the release station, sign in there also, and hit print, thinking all is good. Nothing comes out of the printer. I figure maybe it takes a while, so wait a little longer, but realize that nothing is going to printer after the next person comes up and instantly gets their document. That's when I left to go to class.
Now we get to today, and I tried the same thing, on a different group of computers (they have a LOT of computers that are nearly always all busy, probably 500 of them). Same thing--no printing. So I go ask a lady, babble some rough Spanish to her, making up words like I usually end up doing, and she comes over to look at it. I show her how the document says it's printing but actually doesn't, and she comes to look at my computer. She has me sign in to something else, and then we walk over to the release station, sign in again, and it prints. So then I asked her what was different this time, and it turned out that I hadn't had any printing credits (I think we are supposed to have 100). I couldn't really understand why I hadn't been given any, but did figure out that it will work next time I try, and that I have 77 free pages left (a pretty random number I thought). I think I'll go plenty early next time I need something printed.
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