Day 9

First thing is first. Some of you have been concerned with the storm in the gulf. Until people started asking me about it and if it was affecting us, I didn't know it existed! So, no, it hasn't been a problem here in the mountains about as far from either coast as I could get. (But thanks for asking!) The few sprinkles of rain we got this afternoon might be attributed to it, but I literally mean sprinkles. We hauled the clothes off of the clothesline, but I didn't bother with my rain coat or umbrella and the spots on my t-shirt dried within a minute of coming inside.

Today was FULL of stuff today. I started the day with more kindergarten graduations. Today, Migdalia (the daughter of our cook, Alba) and Oswaldo graduated from kindergarten. So, I went and took pictures there. When I got back, I downloaded the pictures from my camera and uploaded some onto Facebook. Shortly after we got back, there was a snack of cake to celebrate all of our graduates. I took some time to call my cousin, Mihai, in New Zealand. Then I took care of Deivi and David, our two youngest. I took care of David until he fell asleep, and then I took care of Deivi until it was time for lunch. When lunch was over, I came back to my room, and found David awake in his bed; so I took him to the dining hall and fed him.

The afternoon was busy too. Estuardo brought me back Christina's phone. The problem was that the phone hadn't been used in 10 months and the SIM chip had gone bad. So, Q50 (about $6.25) later, the phone works and has a new phone number. Anyone who feels like they need the number, feel free to ask me for it. I called my mother and gave her the new number. After that, I went out with the Peques and watched them play soccer (European football, but since most of my readers are American, I'll use the American name) until the sprinkles started. I herded the boys out of the ball court and down toward their house. Then I ran up to help with the clothesline. We have a sneaking suspicion that it is the longest clothesline in the world, but we're pretty positive that it is the longest in Guatemala. Fortunately, most of the clothes had already dried, I moved the rope, and a couple of the medianos ripped clothes and clothespins off the line as fast as they could. Then we took the big pile of clothes and shoved it under a roof.

On my way down to the Peques house, Don Lorenzo's son, Willy, saw me and asked how I was doing. I inquired after his health and that of his baby, and he asked how long I had been here and how long I would be staying. He is someone who I would usually avoid associating with (for reasons I won't go into), but he's a friendly face; so the conversation was welcome. And I guess that's a good thing since I'll be seeing plenty more of him. (Thanks, Sarah, for reminding me on Facebook what his name was!)

Later that afternoon, myself and 4 of the boys cleaned out all of the boxes from the little green house near the gate where they hope to move the office to. Karen was pretty much shocked that we cleaned it all out so quickly. And I was actually surprised when I looked outside the house just how many boxes there were out there; I had just been passing the boxes to the boys who placed them wherever they could find a dry spot. Erick Flores joined us late, but he worked like a horse! A lot of the other boys were complaining about the heavy boxes so much that I started pretending the heavy boxes were light and the light boxes were heavy. (Because I was pulling a switch on them, I always made sure they had a good hold on the boxes before I let go.) Anyway, we sorted out some of the boxes, but we couldn't finish before it got dark; so some of the boxes went back into the little green house until tomorrow.

I gobbled down dinner and hurried back to the Peques dorm to give Deivi his medicine. He has some sort of infection or something. Because the "teachers" are 24 hours on/24 hours off (with one of them staying the whole weekend), it is easier to have me give them the medicine as I'm a constant. And here I am.

Moving into my new room: tomorrow?