Friday, Jan 9 - Let the work begin

So after an evening of cooking hamburgers, making home fries, and playing spoons, I hit the sack around 8:30. Next thing I remember Bennett comes waking me up saying, "It's 6:45." I am polite on the outside, but don't really feel that way otherwise. I manage a, "Thank you," and slowly start the day after my 10+ hours of sleep. The showers are pretty good after you figure out how to keep the water continuously hot. We have breakfast: Frosted Flakes which here are named Zucaritas (same brand) and milk from a box that doesn't need to be refrigerated. Sounds not exactly delicious but you'd be surprised. I'm not trying to give too much information here, but the bathroom situation is unique. The pipes aren't exactly toilet paper approved...I'm just going to leave it there, you get the picture. Jack Ciak tells us our "mission" for the day is to start working on building and painting the benches he mentioned we'd be making while we're here. We worked essentially from 8:00 until 4:30 with about 2 hours off for lunch and rest. We started by intensely cleaning the wood-shop which was no small job. Afterwards we started the building and painting. We had fun, but we only have 6 out of 24 built, two of which are primed and ready for paint. Hopefully since we have a hang of things we can move a lot quicker tomorrow and subsequent days.

I don't speak Spanish. I've dipped my feet into the language with Sp 101, but my ability to flow languages is limited to English and French. You'd think that would be a bad thing here, but I've actually been starting to work with Adriana, one of the kids here at Casa, teaching her some French! She knows some of the basics like Je m'apelle... and Como ça va?, so I can actually "tutor" her in a way. We're learning "I can speak French" and "I have a sister." She's a quick learner, too so quite possibly we could cover a lot. At the same time she's teaching me some Spanish. People helping each other. Seems like I've read that somewhere...