My room! I have camera access, still no batteries. A new group arrived yesterday: only 8 of them: 1 grandma with every illness under the sun, 1 brave middle aged judge, 3 20-somethings and 3 young football players. It should be an interesting dynamic. Grandma's a bit bossy, but it'll make an interesting week.

And this is the courtyard, large kitchen the groups use and the view from the roof (sta bonita va)


Today was also the first day of being really frustrated with this organization. We got to the work site to put a cement roof on a building that hadn't been worked on since 2003. Five years. I'm wondering if the walls we finished last week will ever bear a roof. How long is it going to take? They promised by the end of the summer but all we have to do is pay two bricklayers and the job could be done in 2-3 days! There are so many places with more need, it seems silly to be completing an old project for the nutrition project when they aren't even using all the classrooms they have right now. There's about 30 students who arrive at 9 for homework help and a bit of instruction, are fed lunch (today was lentils, rice and chopped up hot dog) and dismissed at 11:45. School starts for them at 1:30 and continues until roughly 5:45pm.

Anyway, we got to the site without proper tools, made about 5 trips to the hardware store instead of purchasing everything at once and meanwhile, diabetic grandma (who also suffers from arthristis, heart disease and is undergoing chemo for a 3rd bout of cancer, god bless her!), won't stop shoveling cement! I was getting nervous watching her. Who goes to the ferreteria and buys 5 pieces of rebarb and then returns to get the other 7? Sometimes it seems to difficult to improve the way things work here making it very frustrating and hard to accomplish anything. Prep work like this should've been completed days ago and it makes for a poor impression on the groups (of which there are sadly less and less each year). I figure if I can't change anything this summer I can at least write up a report and see if that gets us anywhere...