After a long night of sleep (that was frequently interrupted by my waking up and frantically brushing imaginary bugs off of my bed) I woke to sunlight shining though the window, and the sound of birds singing...really loud birds...a lot of them. There had been a great deal of lightning that night, though I couldn't hear the thunder--either because it was really far away, or because the crickets were really loud, I'm not sure which. It had also rained and thereby cooled off the area enough that I actually unfolded my "pillow" (my hoodie) and laid it over top of me.
I probably got up some time around 7 to 7:30--some time close to the crack of dawn anyway. The interesting thing that I noticed during my time in Mexico is that most of the time I had no idea what time it was, and it didn't really matter. The only times I would pay attention to the time were when I wanted to know how long it was till lunch or dinner. Other than that, who cares. I don't know when I went to sleep each night, and I have no idea when I got up in the mornings. However, I do know that in both cases--morning and night--sleeping and waking occurred very consistently around the same time every day.
So the morning began. As I have already mentioned, Ed walked to the nearby store to get milk and fruit for breakfast, and this particular morning a few of us--including myself--joined him in this venture.
The shop was a small building about the size of two dorm rooms (in Warner Pacific measurements it would be 4 dorm rooms). There were a lot of familiar things there, though most of them had different names and packaging shapes. While I was standing around looking at various things I felt something touch the back of my heel. I'll admit it startled me because my first thought was 'large insect, or scorpion'. When I turned around, however, I discovered that it was only the cold, wet nose of a small dog.
Upon our return Ed began promptly to get things set out for breakfast. A lot of the cereal was very familiar--coco puffs, Cheerios, Cinnamon squares, and more--but again, they all had different names. We also had a can of peach halves every morning, as well as some pastry or bread, and juice. I guess it was the picturesque "part of this complete breakfast" you always see on cereal commercials.
After breakfast it was time to start working. Clayton and I went straight to work on the bicycles. There were several bikes that were in bad condition, as well as a storage room of bicycle parts to work with. We did what we could with what we had, but usually our efforts ended with the realization that there was some key element that we were not able to fix.
While we were working on our first bike the sky began to precipitate on us (it started to rain). At first it was just like an Oregon sprinkle, so we moved our operation into the tool shed. Before too long we were really glad we had moved, because suddenly it started coming down by the bucket-loads. It was ridiculous. The rain probably went on like that for about 30-45 minutes. Most of the rest of the crew had to stop working on their projects unless they were already working inside.
We worked on bicycles most of the day. The hardest part was probably when Caesar (Say-zar), one of the kids, would try to show us what to do and what was wrong with the bikes. There were times when he was right, but he was just getting in the way, or he would try to tell me something that I already knew. And then there were times when he would try to explain something to me when I had already figured out that the problem was really something else. All in all, though, I couldn't help but appreciate his enthusiasm, and what mechanical understanding he displayed. He kept telling me "un momento" so that I would step back for a moment and let him do his work. I quickly learned from this technique and was able to use it later to get him to step back for a moment so that I could do my work. It's all about communication.
Of course lunch and dinner were both amazing and delicious. Our dinner dessert was flan. I'm not sure what flan is, but I ate it. It wasn't too bad. It was very sweet, so I wasn't able to finish it, but that's okay.
After dinner we all sat around talking and hanging out. Eventually I went and got my guitar. We sang some songs until we couldn't stand the flies any more, then off to bed we went.
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