The Attack of the Gringos

This past week, my group (62) reconvened for the first time together since we departed for our sites back at the end of the October. The purpose of this was to give an update on how things went for the first three months, receive some additional training and fine tune our Spanish. Or in my case, learn a bunch of additional things that now have me more confused than before the classes. OK, I’m embellishing things some, but really the time spent together was great.

The training ended after lunch on Friday and we all dispersed back to our sites. Well, most of us anyway. Because of the hour that we were let go, and the distance some people have to travel to get to their site, it was not possible for people to get back home. Since I only lived a couple hours from where we were at, I invited my friends Jay and Julia to stay with me on Friday night. (By the way, I have plugged their blog before, but after my sister told me how much better their blog was than mine last week, I feel like I need to do so again) So, they told me they were in. Cool. From there, that’s when things really get interesting. As word spread that they were staying, before I knew it, I had a couple more interested. OK, not a problem. Then a couple more. Now, I am starting to think how I can handle all these people!

When the dust settled, I had seven people coming to stay with me now. Sadly one person had to back out on Friday morning. In any case, it was quite a bit of people. Thankfully, my house is pretty big, but I had a few minor details that I had think about. First, I have a water shortage problem during the day. This wouldn’t be that big of a problem since we would be getting back late and they would be leaving early, but I wasn’t sure if I had enough water that night for everybody to take a shower. Second, we wanted to cook dinner, but my stove is not fully hooked up yet. I have been just using a single hot plate to get me by. What if we wanted to make a big dinner?! Third, where was everybody going to stay? I have bed room for three people, a hammock and a sleeping mat. That adds up to five, which is short of seven. Lastly, what would my community think of all the gringos in the community?

In the end, everything worked out. There was enough water. We opted to make some tacos that were fantastic (I lapped the field eating six!). The sleeping situation was not ideal, but we all survived. Only one person slept directly on the concrete floor. Finally, my community loved the visitors. My counterpart and cooperative president, Sergio brought his little boy over on Friday night and had dinner with us. Then the next morning we went down to the port where we met a couple of boats that were just pulling back into the port after staying out at the ocean during the night to do their fishing. One thing the group of fishermen caught was a sting ray and we got to see them carve it up so it could be sold. I think the group had mixed feelings on that.

Then 9:30 came and the group pulled out to head back to their own worlds. My house became empty and quiet again, but the buzz in my community remained. After cleaning up, I headed out to chat with some folks. They were impressed with my friends and asked when they were coming back.

Soon, I told them. Just let me get my house in order first.