La Huasteca

Well, yesterday was kind of a day off... The CHCA teams left early, early, early in the morning, so we got up a little later than normal... We made some breakfast and had a staff meeting at 8:30... During the staff meetings we talk about the week prior for a little bit... We go over some highlights and try to tighten up any loose issues from the week... Then we start talking about the next week, go over responsibilities, and discuss any potential gaps we might not have thought about up until this point... The staff here is great! They have great hearts and a great ability to work together... This summer will be a great experience in learning to live in community well with others... I already have some thoughts about making it work, but I want to discuss some of this stuff with the staff to make sure I'm not jumping to conclusions...

So, onward... Jen was pretty tired after the meeting so she went back to our room and read a little bit and took a nap... I went with John over to one of the houses we're working on and hung some doors... It's really hard to do finishing work on the houses because they are either not level or out of plumb... It's hard to work with the building materials (not much drywall or plaster here)... The walls are all a masonry material so they are wavy... Wavy is not good... But we're working with it!

After lunch we loaded up with the interns and John and Corrie and headed out... Fridays are mostly a day off for interns - no work, just a morning meeting... So every Friday one of the staff takes them out somewhere cool... This Friday we went to a place called La Huesteca (pronounced West Tecka)... It's one of the most famous places in the world for mountain climbing... And it's also the place where they filmed Lord of the Rings... just teasing, but it sure looks like it... There is a big open field that sits surrounded by mountains...

We decided to hike up to one of the caves, which was great but a little precarious (see the picture)... If we were in the states we would have to sign a bunch of waivers and swear that we would never sue anyone there ever and sign it in DNA-readable blood ink... But since we're in Mexico we just started hiking! It was great, and there were really only a few tricky places... If we would have had more time we would have kept going (I can't imagine the pictures that were waiting up there!)...


After we got down the mountain we were pretty hungry, so we went to this all-you-can-eat buffet place called Sirloin Stockade... We ate a lot of food... We ate about $20 worth of food each, but there was a special going on so we each ended up paying under 5 bucks per person... We came home worn out and headed straight for bed...

Today's been pretty good, some work in the morning and some basketball in the afternoon... There's not too much to do once the camp is clean... We just kind of relax and wait for the teams... This week there are two teams - one from Northstar and one from Southbrook... I heard both of them are delayed, so the waiting continues! I'll post some more pictures later...