ok, so my blog seems to be working again! hurrah! i´m here at an internet cafe in Mazatenango, which is the place we´re staying while we work with Habitat. today was slightly dull on the jobsite but exotic at the same time! we´re putting the plumbing in (yay, i´m a plumber just like my dad now!), and the way they do it is to give me and Peter a hammer and pick and ask us to chisel a 4 inch hole in the cement blocks in different sections of the walls. so we seriously did that all day long. ALL DAY LONG. that´s all the rest of my small group did too! we just switched on and off. my forearms are bulging beasts now, i swear.
Poor Geoff was sick and stayed at the dorms yesterday instead of coming to work. he was back today, but devoid of strength. Tabitha and Julia spent most of the morning exhausted and kept nodding off, so they headed back to the college at lunch to sleep and get better. Julia´s been hit hard with the bug. I´ve still got a cold, but it´s not too bad.
oh! so today we´re chiseling away at the wall when this old man comes hobbling by with his cart shouting ¨cocos! cocos!¨ so we went out and bought 2 whole coconuts, drank the milk, smashed them on the wall, and ate the innards. walking back to the bus i was all like ¨wow, that was awesome! i´m in an exotic country, building an exotic house, trying to speak an exotic language, and eating some exotic fruit. this is awesome!¨ and Pan goes, ¨Yeah, and now we´re all gonna be exotically sick from it.¨ it was hilarious.
we had these amazing chicken salad sandwiches for lunch (i think they are trying to give our stomachs a rest from the guatemalan beans, plantanes, and corn tortillas) and my friend, Pan, was like ¨Ew, i hate chicken gristle¨and i was like ¨Yeah, me too¨ and NONE of the others in our small group had even HEARD of the word gristle before. guess what they call it in Manitoba?? GURNURPLE. gurnurple. sick animal! well, i guess we´ve finally found a word that rhymes with purple. haha!
anyway, not much else to say. on Saturday i meet my family who i´ll be living with for pretty much the rest of the time we´re here. ahh! i hope they´re nice. with many little children. love you all! and i´m pray for you guys too. later!
Janelle (they call me ¨Hun-ay-uh¨ here. i love it.)