MONDAY UPDATE...

Great night´s sleep again last night -- living in THE CASTLE seems to agree with us/me especially!

Rushed off and I made it to morning Mass (was just a ´little´late) -- strange, I haven´t figured this one out yet... Holy Mass is @ 8 a.m., and breakfast for the volunteers is @ 8 a.m... so I was, of course, late for breakfast. No biggie, the oatmeal was waiting for me!

Seems like we have a ton of groups here. (1) There is our family of 4. (2) Rebecca, who is alone here in our Castle with us, while her sister & two adults from their church went to another town for immersion Spanish. (3) There´s another family of 4 from, I forgot where. It´s great they have two boys a little younger than Sean & Mac, respectively. (4) We have had a few young men and women that are here on their own for varying amounts of time, but mostly about 1 month (Chris, Stephanie, Grant). (5) We have a medical school group of about 10ish. (6) Then there´s a youth group from, oh gosh, I forgot where they´re from, too. SORRY. They have about 14 youth & one of the leaders is Adrian, a nice young man (and cool cuz he´s wearing aLife teen t-shirt from Steubenville!)

This morning Mac, Rebecca, and I volunteered in the kitchen with Chona (sounds like a song!), first we got to do the important task of drying dishes -- SERIOUSLY!! Here two of the most important steps are bleaching the dishes (major bleach-water) and then making sure the dishes are completely, and I mean completely dried. It´s even best if they are air dried, which is how the volunteer dishes get done...but we were drying the cooks´pots & pans. Then we got to work with vegetables & string beans. Amazing to look at what we saw in the kitchen and then see the incredible meal that was given to us...WOW. Sean said the lunch was his favorite meal here so far this time!

OH ABOUT THE WATER-AMOEBAS -- the air drying keeps us from getting sick. Someone out there asked about washing our clothes in the water...we´re okay with the water as long as it doesn´t get into our digestive system...so if we don´t eat our wet clothing, we may be okay. Seriously though, pray none of us get sick!

OH THEN THE COOLEST THING...CHONA INVITED MACKENZIE TO GO OUT IN THE MARKET-VILLAGE TO SHOP FOR FRUITS & VEGETABLES WITH HER! Amazingly, Mackenzie is wearing her San Lucas clothing that Chona picked out for her last year when we were here. It was so great of Chona to invite Mac to go with her & Rebecca went along too. Since they were cutting it close to lunch, they even took a TUK TUK back to the Parish! Fun. Chona keeps bragging to Father Greg what a great helper Mackenzie is now & was last year. I´m dreading the tears of Chona this year -- or actually the fight to take Mac home with me!!!

This morning the guys headed off with Chris and Stephanie to the local school to teach English to the little kids. Amazing here, the native Mayan language is Cakchiquel, in this village. When the little children begin their education, they are taught in SPANISH. Imagine if they tried that in the US...teaching our children in a totally foreign language -- parents would flip! smile. Pat & Sean really enjoyed the time with the children. Hopefully there will be room in the vehicle when they head up the mountain to teach again in another small village so that Mac & Mom can experience that!

The plan for the guys for the afternoon was to head off to paint the inside of the Women´s Center. Plan? Like God says to Evan in Ëvan Almighty¨¨YOUR PLAN, HA HA?¨ Guess it wasn´t God´s plan for them to paint this afternoon cuz they ran out of paint earlier this morning. Now they´re headed off to the reforestation project along with Mac going with them this time.

Cards??? Yep, Sean remains the craziest card addict I know, with a priest running in a tight 2nd. Sean´s now even worse because he´s learned the game of SPOONS...which is FAST and CRAZY RADICAL! Just what we need in a mission where there are free sodas (somehow he keeps forgetting my 1 or max 2 per day) hmmm.. The cards are great because you end up meeting a bunch of other volunteers!

We had a HUGE CLOUD OVERTAKE THE VILLAGE YESTERDAY...It didn´t quite rain, nor sprinkle. It was just a huge mist that had the village running in HIGH SPEED. It hasn´t rained here for over 3 weeks, so I think when it does, IT WILL POUR!! I´ve never seen rain like I experienced here last year. Seriously, looking out thru the rain, I couldn´t see a thing! Sean loved the rain cuz that meant CARDS. Pat didn´t like the rain cuz that meant NO WORK.

A question to ponder...
Are you a Martha or a Mary?