catching up & Sundays

What a week.  It was a week full of so many emotions...fear, uncertainty, anger, great sadness, apprehension, celebration, thanksgiving, just to name a few.  The city is still recovering from the flooding.  We're all hoping that Bonnie will stay away and that the dam upstream will hold.  We're hoping that the people of Piedras will be able to recover from a very tragic loss. The mayor was not only a great man, but doing so much for this city.  He was a visionary and a great leader.  He will be replaced soon, but never forgotten.  We've seen quite a few VIPS around for the funeral- and that means quite a few security details, automatic machine guns and all.  I think I've gotten used to seeing it around, and sadly don't even pay much attention to it anymore.  The President of Mexico will come tomorrow to survey the damage and meet with folks in the city.  You can imagine how much fanfare that will bring!

This week is a new week.  We're building 6 houses (usually 5 is our max) and have a medical team at the clinic.  We have a packed house and more mouths to feed than usual.  That's exciting and scary at the same time!  So what do we do to get ready for all of those people?  Some of you have asked what I do during the week...I thought maybe I'd let you know on this week, my last week here.

Sunday is the one and only day we are able to sleep in.  Today I made it until 8:30, which was absolute heaven!  I usually get up, go workout (it's usually too warm to run outside by the time I get up, so this is a good day for the gym), then get busy with my jobs around the tent.  I have to clean tables & chairs, wash dishes, prepare 5-gallon water bottles (and the pumps that go in them) for the incoming groups, clean the trailers (both the food storage & staff trailers), count group numbers (and in today's case, make sure we have enough chairs), look through health forms for allergies, food issues & birthdays, and anything else that needs to be done around the tent area.  At some point I have lunch, a shower, then am ready for our staff meeting at 1:00 pm.  We usually meet for an hour or a little more, then wait for the groups to arrive between 3:00 and 3:30.  I meed with the Food Coordinators & Health Coordinators for a mini orientation at 4:00 pm, then we have our big orientation at 5:30 pm.  Because Sunday is usually such a long day, I typically skip dinner out with groups (dinner in another country with 25 people is a very long process), and eat here or go out with just a few of the staff.  Tonight we went to the hotel restaurant- I enjoyed my tacos, guacamole & beans.  I fixed coffee for tomorrow morning and now it's time (or past time in this case) for bed....though truthfully, 4:00 am is early no matter when you get to sleep!

Stay tuned for Monday!