Wed, Feb 9th,2011 "Yo no Casada"

Jim with the Father 2 sons and a daughter

John. The hippy traveling poem writer

 Stove #3 finished! I learned so many words each day, it´s so hard to remember them all. I worked with Marg, and John again today and Jim who arrive yesturday (Liz too) joined our group as well. Our mason was Marvin! He was Muy Bueno. Very fast and efficient and really paid attention to details.

The family we were with today had 6 kids! We had our chimney up by lunch. It was incredible.


Since everyone is here in the GSP group finally, we took a group picture after breakfast, and at lunch as well.


 

  

  

Renny cutting some delicious pound
cake up for us

Meagan

It was Renny´s birthday today, so we had a pound cake and sang happy birthday in french. After lunch, me and Karen went to hand out the photos we printed and some other gifts. This morning I went to the store across the street to see if they had paper notebooks to hand out with the pencil´s I had. But we found 2 huge bags of pequeno(small) balls instead. So Phil got those and we gave 5 out with the photos from where we were on Day 1 of stove building.With hair ties, sharpeners, and erasers too.

And now for my string of awkward photos with the people.

  

    

Marg bought some plasticine so we gave that to the boy. Reinaldo who was making pyramids with the Mortar and trowel. They were all just grabbing at what we had. I held it up high to fend them off, but that didn´t deter them much haha. They were very grabby with the photos as well, and most of them ended up getting mangled a bit. But they were so happy to get them.

  

 I was taking pics of the family we were with today and Padre requested a picture copy of his family too. So I´ll get some more printed for him too after work.

"Yo no Casada"  is, I´m not married..

"Yo no Quiero a casar", is I don´t want to be married.. Which is a very important one to know so they dont try to fix me up with their sons after they see that i´m 23 and not married with babies yet haha.

Me and Marg played football with some garbage today, and tried to get the male and femail children involved too. Then they brought out their ball. which the father had to fill up by blowing into it occassionally. The Padre wet the ground so it wasn´t so dusty to play on. They had a make'shift goal up, with 2 sticks and a strip of fabric.

I was watching 2 of the daughters washing clothes today, and it was gallo soap (which is the same name as the beer we usually order..).



Where we built the stove in the house was all black on the walls and there was a roof hole above it that was closeable. Hard to imagine having an open fire in your kitchen that smoke´s that much.

When we finally got into the van to get the gifts for the family, Marg and I went back to give them tooth brushes/toothpaste, some clay, a skipping rope, and a brand new soccer ball!! there was a woman there who didn´t live there who asked us if she was getting a stove a too (which took longer then I´d like to admit to figure out), but odds were if she didn´t know yet then she wasn´t getting one, as they have the supplies there waiting a bit in advance. But she could still get one at a later time.

Me and Max went on a tour of Xela after completing our mission for Helado! (Ice cream) We came across this big cemetary, but didn´t wander too far in because we thought they were closing soon. and Tom got locked in one year haha. We wandered into the bussling downtown district where it´s just non stop traffic and people. The car fumes eventually started making me feel sick (a lot of cars run on deisel here). So we wandered back in the direction of the hostel. I had Indian for Dinner and got the only non picante (spicey) dish. Or so I thought... I ended up ordered an extra nan bread for 8 quetzal ($1).