May 24

Today we were out and about trying to explore the city a bit more, but we were thwarted by the fact that it's Sunday and most everything is closed. I guess it's no surprise. We ended up hanging out in the lounge of our hostel and meeting fellow travellers, including a nice Swiss couple who had just arrived. Tom is finding German speaking people - backpackers at our hostel - left and right. Now I have some idea how he feels when I am speaking Spanish. I try to translate everything for him but it is too time consuming. Plus it is easy to forget after studying Spanish for 12 years that English and Spanish are pretty mutually intelligible. Tom understands a lot and he is really trying hard to learn Spanish (when he's not speaking German). Most people at the airport and at restaurants wear tapabocas (swine flu masks) and we are wondering if we should be nervous. We think we have enough threats to our systems to deal with, especialy after our Saturday indoors.