Day 13 – First Day of My Second Week

Starting out with a 5 o’clock arms and chest workout surprisingly gave me more energy throughout the day than I thought it would have. I was still tired after work but while doing the actual work, I was fine. I started off working in the new school building doing everything from sifting sand from rocks to sawing boards, to hammering cement.

A new team came in too from Brookhaven church or something like that. Most of them are from Mississippi with a couple from California. They are from a church rather than a college this time so they are a lot more diverse when it comes to age. The oldest is a grandmother and the youngest is probably 12. It is a rather large group too at 17. One of the cool things about this group, beside the fact that they speak my southern American language, is that several of them have been here multiple times and have very needed skills for construction. It is completely different than the college team that was here recently.

I am no longer the go to guy for construction needs of the team because now they all know more than me too. The Maestros still go to me for some reason for translation. I guess they figure since they know me a little better, they can communicate better with me. This is false. Sometimes when they need to tell someone to do something, they will come tell me and then I will tell them. I feel like a translator except that I can’t speak either language that well. Haha.

For lunch, I’ll bet you can’t guess where I ate. . . Yep, Alexanders again. It was really good and I got this coconut ice cream stick thing they have. Yum, it was so good. After lunch, I finished up the ridiculous inventory of all the PE equipment. All in all, they have like 400 balls. It is ridiculous but I did finally get it all counted. Then came PE which is getting to be more and more enjoyable as I get to know the kids better. Today we did dancing. I have about 7 classes left with the older girls so I have decided to teach them the Evolution of Dance. They really like dancing and it is an aerobic exercise so I thought why not? It has started out well. We only finished one class but got about a minute and a half into it which is impressive for an American song among 7 Ecuadorian girls. I will try to film it when we actually do it so you can watch.

After work ended, I got to come home and take a quick nap. It was wonderful and short. Post nap time, I went up to Tandy's house and grabbed a ton of left over Chinese food they had. Apparently the team had ordered Chinese and given the extra to them. I now have like 5 lbs of cooked rice in my refrigerator. Needless to say, I stayed in and ate dinner at home. It was a little difficult however because our microwave is broken. It runs when you shut the door whether you have punched in number or not. Then, if you don't open the door back quickly, it starts sparking as if there were metal in it or something. We think some cockroaches got in there and messed with the wiring some. So instead of the handy dandy old microwave which I now know that I take for grant it, I just mixed all the food together and put it on a pot on the stove. It wasn't too bad and most importantly, it was free. 

After dinner, I got my shoes back on and headed to dance. Again, all the girls were there and laughed at me the whole time but there is really nothing else to do that late at night and I eat so much food that I have to do something athletic. It always wears me out so when I came home, I quickly took a shower and crashed in bed. Luckily, I was asleep before 9 ready for my 5 am wake up.