Just saw The Bourne Identity. Very good movie. I’ll write what I thought of it tomorrow. I’ll say this much. I liked the movie so much I bought the book it’s based upon. It looks like I’ve found a new author to read. In other news, I can’t believe I let the new Left Behind book come out without me knowing about it until now. I’ve read all the books but I guess I’m losing interest because they’re undeniably watering the books down in an effort to stretch the story out and thus make more money. It’s kind of sad considering that the series is a Christian endeavor. I guess everybody’s out to make a buck; even Christians.

I’m going to bed. The World Cup final is tomorrow, bright and early. Later.

Great game this morning in the World Cup Third Place match. Turkey v. South Korea. Final Score Turkey 3, Korea 2. Talk about excitement. Those who watched (myself included) witnessed World Cup history with the fastest goal ever in the World Cup when Turkey’s Sukur scored 10 seconds into the game. Yes you read that right. 10 seconds. Amazing. A terrible misplay by the Korean central defender left Sukur wide open in front of the goal for the score. If you blinked you would have missed it. This was a great game. Korea scored less than 10 minutes later. Then Turkey scored. It was great. Incredibly exciting first half. I can’t remember if Turkey scored their third goal at the end of the first or beginning of the second half. I want to say the first. Anyway this was a really great game. You couldn’t tell that these teams were playing for the 2nd runner up position. They looked like they were playing for the final. The crowd was awesome as usual. I definately think the Korean crowd wins the team spirit and support award over my beloved Japanese crowd this year. What an amazing atmosphere. Props also go to the Korean team for putting in a second goal 2 minutes into stoppage time.

Well here’s hoping that tomorrow’s final is as good today’s Third Place game. Hats off to both Turkey (A place I lived in for 3 years) and Korea ( A place I’ve visited on several occasions.) That’s what I like to see. Up and down, wide open soccer. Great game. Germany and Brazil, take notes. You’re playing in the final tomorrow. Please play like it. Go after each other. I’m not saying play with reckless abandon. Just play your hardest, best soccer so that we have a final that provides an ending that lives up to the excellence that has been the FIFA 2002 World Cup. Peace, I’m out.

Asthma. I hate it. I’ve had it my whole life so sometimes I take if for granted. But I hate it. The Mexico trip in addition to a few other things has thrown my medication schedule off. That means my med levels, which have been pretty good for the last couple of months, have dropped below where they need to be. When all levels are correct, it feels like I don’t even have Asthma. But times like now remind me all too well that that’s not the case. Strange thing is I’ll play softball tonight and it will make me feel better. It’s always been that way. Unless I’m having a really bad attack, playing sports or doing other physically demanding activities seems to help my asthma. Oh well, this too will pass. I’ll get past it and move on. Yet another reason to look forward to heaven. No more Asthma. Hallelujuah!!!!

I’m getting the hang of this whole blogging thing. Mostly from looking at the blogs that other people are writing. I used to write a lot in High School and Middle School so I’m using this blog as a way to get back into it and provide a creative outlet for myself. Even though I’m writing this for me, I’m going to strive to be more reader friendly. I’ll try to keep the posts short unless I’ve got a lot on my mind. The mexico updates were long, took all day to write, and probably weren’t very fun to read. Probably won’t do that again. I may write one more in abreviated form to relay the rest of what I wanted to say about the fun part of the trip. To see an exellent example of what I consider a good blog and what I’m striving for, check out The Text Obscured a blog by a lady named ISMAT. Enjoy.

VH1 Movie Play’d. Feels like I got PLAY’D.

It’s late. I should be asleep but I’m sitting here watching this VH1 movie, Play’d, A Hip Hop Story. It’s a fairly captivating. They basically took the whole Tupac vs. Biggie, East Coast vs. West Coast beef, changed the names, set it in 2002 and wrote an elaborate back story It appears they changed the ending. The Tupac character (Jax) looks like he’s actually gonna live. There’s 20 minutes left. I guess we’ll see. Dang it’s hot in here. Better turn on the fan on.

This just in. Tupac, I mean Jax may die after all. They just went to a commercial and the little bump tease going into the break showed somebody pulling a gun. What a blatant rip off. They got Fazon Love (of The Parent Hood fame) playing the Suge Knight character. They’re got a dude playing the biggie role. Though I must admit that they showed some innovation there. The character isn’t big like Biggie was. He’s normal sized. That’s straight up ingenious kid. That right there proves that they aren’t just ripping off the real life stories of Biggie and Tupac. This movie is completely original. Not. What a joke. And what an idiot I am for sitting here watching. But what the heck there’s only 15 minutes left. Might as well watch the ending. It’s still hot in here and I still need to turn on the fan.

Yes the writer’s are true innovators. Jax did get shot. And technically he died. He flatlined but they brought him back to life. (Ah…the wonders of modern medical technology.) Way to go VH1. You’ve got a hit on your hands here. Great job. Not!!! I’m going to bed.

Just a sec. Before I hit the sack for the night, I’d like to inject a little positivity into what has been an otherwise negative post. I did like their casting of Toni Braxton in this film. She FINE!!! Her acting is a bit questionable but who cares. She’s fine!!! That’s it. I’m out.

Just got back from church. Good service tonight. On the last Wednesday night of the month we have Singing Night. It’s a time where instead of breaking off into our classes, everybody stays in the auditorium and we sing. I look foward to singing usually and tonight was no exception. The men of the church lead singing and can either pick out their own songs or lead songs requested from everybody else. It’s a great service and I wish we could do it more often. I enjoy singing and making music in general. Since I’m not in band anymore, don’t own a trumpet anymore and don’t own a keyboard anymore, church is my only musical outlet. So anytime I get to make music I jump at it. Anyway it was a great service. This has been a great week so far. I pray that it continues to go well.

Went to see the WUSA San Jose Cyberrays play the Memphis Merury in an exhibition game at out at Mike Rose Soccer Complex, one of the nicest all soccer facilities certainly in the region and probably in the whole country. They’ve got 18 manicured soccer fields and a newly finished 5,000 seat soccer only stadium. The place is phat. My league plays all their games out there which means I get to play at this great facility almost every weekend. Anyhow, back to the game. It was pretty good. The Mercury were obviously outclassed and seemed to be in awe at least at the beginning. The Cyberrays won the WUSA championship last year and are near the top of the league this year I believe. Which when you get right down to it means they’re probably the best women’s soccer team in the world or one of them since the US is home to the best women soccer players in the world. I realized watching this game that the WUSA is no joke and these ladies can play. The Mercury are good. They also won their league championship last year but it was literally like watching a Triple A team play a big league team. The WUSA gals were bigger, stronger, and faster that our girls and it showed. Brandy Chastain is buff. Straight up. She’s lean and mean. Man she’s in great shape. I’ll admit that while I’m a soccer fan, I don’t really keep up with women’s soccer all that much outside of going to a few Mercury games here and there. I think I’ll start thanks to the exhibition I saw last night. The final score was 3 nil Cyberrays and everybody had a sense that the Cyberrays were really holding back. The Mercury made a better effort in the second half. Their goalie played awesome the whole game. She made several fantastic saves.

Well I guess that’s all for now. Third and possibly final installment of the Mexico update tomorrow.

(Note: I’m breaking this part into chunks so that hopefully it’s a little easier to read. This section alone has ended up being a little longer than yesterday’s Work Report combined. And I’ve still got a bunch of stuff I want to report. So here’s the first installment of the Fun Report. Enjoy!!!)

****MEXICO UPDATE****

Fun Report (Fun Part) —– Well I’ve told you about the work aspect of our Mexico trip. Now let me fill you in on the fun we had when we weren’t working. Most everything relayed in this update took place between 4pm and Midnight after we got back from the worksite each day.

Let’s see where to start. Why not start with the best part. The women!!! The street in front of our Hotel (I think it probably used to have cars on it but has since been turned into a walking mall) seemed to have an inordinate amount of women on it at all times of the day. I speculated, half jokingly, that they were there because of all the shoe stores. I promise you every third store was a shoe store or zapateria as they call them. Well needless to say, me and Robert being healthy, young American males decided that this street full of women was a good place to be. We spent a lot of time just walking up and down the street. The mall was pretty long. I’d speculate it was a good 4 or 5 city blocks. We stuck out like sore thumbs because we were Americans, which was fine with us because it meant that all eyes were on us when we went out. This paid off big time last Wednesday.

Robert, Andrew, his girlfriend (at least for this trip…. more on this later) and I decided that it was the middle of the week and we needed a taste of America. So we decided to go to McDonalds. I know, I know. We’re in a foreign country and we go to McDonalds? I kind of felt the same at first but by the end of the evening, I definitely was not regretting our decision. We left the hotel and proceeded down the mall. Robert and I strolled along making small talk while Drew and his girl, Shannon, made google eyes at each other. We’re walking along minding our own business (actually we were barely containing our excitement at being surrounded by so many beautiful señoritas) when Robert notices two girls waving at us. One of them, the more outgoing of the two, was very beautiful. Strikingly beautiful. There were lots of pretty, cute, or nice looking women out that day but this girl was like jaw dropping, knock out beautiful. And she was waving at us. I waved back and smiled, as did Robert. We looked at each other, laughed and kept walking. We thought that was neat. All of the women we’d passed so far merely looked. Some smiled but that’s it. These girls actually made eye contact, waved and did that giggly thing that girls do.

(Side Note: One thing I really liked about being in Mexico from a social aspect (meaning the women) was the eye contact. I’m really big on eye contact. My Dad always taught me that when you talk to somebody you make (and maintain) eye contact throughout the conversation. It shows that you’re interested, honest, and in tune with what the other person is saying or doing. When it comes to guy/girl relations I think eye contact is extremely important. But it seems to be something that American women aren’t very good at. I’d venture to say Americans in general aren’t all that comfortable with eye contact. Making and, more importantly, maintaining eye contact forces you to be open and vulnerable to that other person. The eyes are the windows to the soul and all that. Mexican women, at least the ones we came in contact with, seem to have mastered this concept. This plays a big part in the rest of this report so I thought I’d just lay that out before continuing. : End Side Note)

If you thought our egos were puffed up before that. Well let me just say we were on Cloud 9 after that. So we get to McDonalds and spend a few minutes trying to figure out what we want to order and doing mental peso to dollars conversions to figure out how much this is going to cost. After you make your order you move off to the side to wait and allow the folks behind you to order. My order came up so I picked up my tray to proceed to the seating area. (This McDonalds was cool. It was 3 stories. Reminded me of some you see in Japan.) Out of the corner of my eye I notice two girls standing at a phone booth in the middle of the mall right in front of Mickey D’s. I play it off and pretend that I didn’t see them. My mind quickly tells me that it’s the same girls from before and I laugh inside because they’re doing a really poor job pretending to be making a phone call. I turn around and go back to the counter pretending to be getting some more ketchup or something. Robert is still waiting for his order so I quietly whisper to him that I think the girls that waved at us earlier have been following us and are right outside. Now both of us being the smooth mac daddys that we are played it cool and proceeded to walk up to the second floor like we didn’t see them. We got half way up the stairs when the outgoing one yells “Hey!!!” (Note: We later learned that Hey!!! is a common greeting among young folks in Mexico. Usually followed by other nouns like Nayna!! Hey Nayna (Hey Baby) was personal favorite of Robert and I.) We look back and she and her friend are smiling and waving again. We smiled and waved right back and they came in. Me being the klutz that I sometimes am I didn’t want to embarrassed myself in front of two hotties by dropping my tray so I continued up the stairs to put it down. Robert did the same. Robert put his tray down at the first table he saw and quickly headed back down the steps. Drew and Shannon were already seated across the room so I went over there to briefly explain what was happening. Drew had this look on his face that said ‘Man I wish I could go down and holler at the honies with you’. This was of course when Shannon wasn’t looking. Shannon just kind of smiled and rolled her eyes at the silly boys she was hanging out with. I quickly put my tray down and hurried back to the action. We were only separated for maybe a minute tops between the time the time Robert went back down stairs and I did but apparently a lot happened in that time frame. I learned later that night that Robert was the recipient of a smooch on the cheek by the “outgoing one” the second he came back down the stairs. I’m glad he didn’t tell me this until later because I would have been jealous the whole time we were there with them if he had. Introductions were made. The “outgoing one” was Jazmin (Yas-Meen). The shy (though not really shy just less outgoing) one was Inesa (E-Ne-Sa). Both were pretty but as stated before Jazmin was knock dead gorgeous. Inesa was beautiful too but her beauty was very much overshadowed, at least in our minds, by Jazmin. I felt her pain. I don’t think I’m a bad looking guy but when rolling with Robert, he’s the star. Anyway, we stood there on the stairs for a good 10 minutes trying to communicate. Robert talking his ghetto slang while occasionally slipping in a Spanish word, with me trying to translate. And the two girls were mixing English and Spanish like peanut butter and jelly. Robert was awestruck so he wasn’t thinking straight. I was just as awestruck but being older and a bit more mature, I acted as mediator. I was a bit gratified by the fact that while my Spanish speaking ability was poor to say the least, my comprehension was still fairly decent. Credit must go to my 11th grade Spanish teacher for that. Jazmin’s English was pretty good and Inesa was about like me. She didn’t seem to be as adept at speaking English but she definitely understood it. She filled in the gaps for Jazmin when we said something that she wasn’t quite getting. The whole exchange was fun. After a while we settled down into a nice rhythm as we started to get more comfortable with each other. Now Robert and I, once again being typical males, were hungry and our stomachs knew that we had food upstairs waiting for us. So, a few minutes into the conversation, Robert asked them if they wanted to come up and sit with us. They declined saying that they had someplace to be or something. We kept talking and things eventually came to a lull. One of those awkward silence moments, you know. Out of the blue they started walking up the stairs with us saying that they’d like to sit with us. That was great. (Quick Note: I’ll give Drew props though. He got his mac on a little bit while we were on the stairs. He came down under the guise of searching for more ketchup. He asked Jazmin if she would come to the front counter to help him ask for more ketchup. She went down there with him. 1 point to Drew. But then he lost that point after slinking back up stairs to his temporary girlfriend. : End Note)

(Note on their clothing and appearance while I’m thinking about it: Jazmin was wearing a powder blue top with tight black pants. Trust me, it was a very cute outfit. Inesa had on this burnt orange top with blue jeans. Jazmin’s hair was really cool. It was long and black with blond strands dispersed throughout. It’s hard to describe but it looked really good on her. Inesa had brown hair, which was obviously dyed that way. It was cut in a cute, short style that suited her face very well. I won’t even try to describe how Jazmin looked. Words won’t do her justice. Let’s just say that she was FINE. I will say though that she had the biggest, deepest brown/amber eyes I have ever seen. I think her eyes were her best feature. I like eyes on a woman. Goes back to the whole eye contact thing I guess.)

So anyway they came up and sat with us. By this time our food is pretty much cold and we don’t even notice. I think I ate about 1/3 of my Big MAC Ò and barely touched my fries. (Fries are terrible cold. Especially Mickey D’s Fries.) We lost track of time. I think we were sitting there talking for an hour and a half or so. Robert’s a mac. He spit mad game and the girls were eating it up. He’s cracking jokes and going off on tangents that brought mostly laughs from Inesa and Jazmin but occasionally produced confused stares. I found myself playing the straight man to his funny man act, which is cool. That’s the usual role I fall into in these types of exchanges and one I’m comfortable with it. I spent the time asking questions trying to get to know them. It was a really neat exchange. The more comfortable we got with each other the more fun we had. All of us were going back and forth kidding each other and talking like we’d known each other for years. The way we were sitting made it easy to break off and have one on one conversation within the context of the group conversation we were having. Jazmin and I were sitting on one side of the table and Jason and Inesa were on the other. I got to talk to Jazmin for a few minutes. She was really nice and smart too. She’s in her 10th semester (5th year) of college and wants to be a lawyer. She mentioned earlier that she was single and had been that way for going on two years. I asked her why and she said that her last boyfriend was very possessive and jealous of her hanging around other guys. I asked if he had reason to be jealous of these other to which she responded with a mischievous grin and a no. I knew then that Jazmin was a player in her own right. We talked about other stuff but I don’t remember it because I got lost in her eyes several times. Numerous times I had to check myself and make sure I was really there and not dreaming or something. (Yes, I am in Monterrey, Mexico. Yes, I am in a Mexican McDonalds. Yes, this beautiful hottie beside me is actually talking to me. No I’m not in heaven but it must be something like this.) Robert and I mentioned early on that we were down there with our church, building a church for a local congregation. They seemed to take this in stride saying that Jazmin was catholic and Inesa was a member of a local Church of Christ congregation. A running joke we had had to do with them asking us if we danced or liked to go to discotechs and then saying ‘oh we forgot, you’re church boys. You’re not supposed to dance.’ 8:00 o’clock was quickly approaching and we needed to get back to the hotel for our evening devo. We invited them but they declined (But let it be known—-WE DID INVITE THEM). They agreed to walk with us back to the hotel since they were originally heading in that direction anyway. (Before they doubled back to follow us that is.) Robert and Jazmin held hands. I won’t player hate on Robert. He’s got mad game. That doesn’t mean I didn’t have the right to be a little bit envious though. The whole time I’m kicking myself for not walking next to Inesa so that the girls would be in between Robert and I. That would have made for nice pairing and maybe Inesa would have held my hand. (Frown) We got back to the Hotel, exchanged hugs and grudgingly parted ways. (Note: It is the 21st century and we were in a foreign country so instead of exchanging digits, we exchanged email addresses. I guess you could say we got the 21st century digits. It ain’t easy being a modern day mac but somebody’s got to do it. : End Note)

Robert and I raced into the hotel 5 minutes late for devo. We got to the room and nobody was there. We waited a couple of minutes and nobody showed up. We went upstairs and James was in the room chillin’. He said he didn’t know we were supposed to have a devo. Robert and I groaned cause we just cut off our time with two bonita señoritas for a non-existent devo. We raced back downstairs and quickly strolled back up the mall to see if we could find them. We said we weren’t looking for them. We were just back out on the prowl but in hindsight we were looking for them. We discovered a strange phenomenon when we went back out. That mall area pretty much shuts down after 8:30. Most of the shops close. The pretty women go elsewhere and the only folks left are the novios and novias (boyfriends and girlfriends) hanging out and making out. After walking around for about 40 minutes or so we gave up and walked back to the hotel. Hard to believe that was a week ago today. In hindsight, we probably should have headed in the opposite direction from the mall to try to find them since that’s the direction they were heading in. Oh well, that was a heck of a way to spend 2 hours. We had a blast. We had a hard time going to sleep that night. Couldn’t stop talking about our encounter with the beautiful señoritas.

(Another Quick Note: They did have the devo. They just moved to a room in a different part of the hotel. So it turned out that all the occupants of room 533 played hookey from devo that night. Each unintentionally I might add. As you’ll find out, this was the 2nd night in a row for Robert and I. More on that later. We were reminded for the rest of the trip that if we had been there 5 minutes early instead of late, we would have known about the room change. I’ll give them that. We retaliated with the equally valid point that truly considerate people would have left a sign or note at the old room explaining where they were moving to. This provided fuel for numerous jokes for the rest of the week. : End Not So Quick Note)

I’ll write more later. This was just one night. I’ve got two more to write about!!! But my fingers are hurting and my co-workers are looking at me strange because I’ve had this silly smirk on my face this whole time.

****MEXICO UPDATE****

Work Report (Work Part)—– We arrived in Nuevo Laredo (Border Town just across the border from Laredo, Texas) last Sunday bright and early for morning worship service with our Mexican brethren. The pastor there, Paco, had been very helpful in getting us across the border, obtaining visas, and getting our vehicles registered the night before. Paco’s congregation worships in a building that my church along with several others built in the early nineties. I found out that it is very similar to the building that we would be building in Monterrey.
The worship service was interesting. Very uplifting and insightful. The Gospel just seems to be more forceful when spoken in the Spanish language. My favorite part of the service was the singing. My friend Robert and I (Note: Me and Robert will be a recurring theme throughout this account) had fun trying to identify the names and tunes of the songs that they sang. The congregation would start, I’d look at Robert, he’d think for a second and then catch onto the tune and tell me the title. I’d say “Oh yea!” and we’d either hum the tune to ourselves or sing along in English. Later on in the service they had a representative from our group get up and lead singing. He decided to sing the same songs that they had sung earlier in English and encouraged them to sing along in Spanish. That was awesome lifting up praises to the Lord in two different languages. Powerful stuff. The rest of the service was good as well. Get this. They had two sermons. Yep, two. In typical Church of Christ fashion, I figured that the service would last about an hour or so. Not so at this church. It went for 2 + hours. And that’s not a bad thing. Paco didn’t preach. A guy got up there that I’m thinking is the “Head” Pastor and spoke. He spoke for a good 30 minutes. Then he sat down and another younger guy in a bright yellow shirt and colorful tie got up and spoke for another 25-30 minutes. Don’t ask me what they said though. My high school Spanish isn’t that good. Robert and I were able to pick out the scripture references and follow along in our Bibles.
Now I must admit that during the service I did something I haven’t done in a long time in church. I started to nod off. Okay, okay…. I down right fell asleep. At the beginning of the second sermon, my eyelids started getting heavy. I don’t know what the reason was. Maybe it was the heat, or just being tired from the drive down. Or maybe it was being tired cause of my Asthma, which was acting up at the time. Whatever it was, I was tired and sleepy. Anyway, I figured I’d just go with it and try to save face a bit. One of the funniest sites during a church service is seeing somebody nodding off. Head bobbing all over the place then snapping up straight when the person catches himself. I didn’t want to be that person. I figured why front. I’m just gonna turn sideways on the bench, prop my arm up on the windowsill and lay my head down. I got a good 15 or 20-minute nap in before the yellow shirt guy finished and we stood for another song before prayer and dismissal. I must have been successful at keeping my sleep on the DL ’cause nobody seemed to notice or at least they didn’t let on that they noticed. I found out later that I wasn’t the only one snoozing during the long service. That made me feel better.
After service, everybody congregated in the courtyard where we snapped pictures and tried talk to the Mexican church members and got to know the other Americans in our group who would be working side by side with us for the next week or so.
That’s pretty much the highlight of day one. We drove from Nuevo Laredo to Monterrey, roughly a 3-hour drive, checked into our phat hotel (Double Tree Hotel Del Rio) and sacked out for the night.
Monday—Day 2 through 5—Real Work
Me, Robert, and an older guy, James, roomed together and all got up promptly at 6 am. (Note: This was the only time all week that Robert and I got up promptly at 6. As the week went on we each woke up progressively later. James however was up around 5 each morning, fully dressed and walking out the door when we got up. : End Note) (Another Note: I went to bed at 7:30 the night before a) because I didn’t feel good and b) so I could wake up at 1:00 am to watch the USA vs. Mexico World Cup game. For those of you who didn’t know, we (The US) won!!! It was hard staying humble about it when I stepped outside of the hotel that morning but somehow I found a way to do just that out of fear of being beaten senseless. : End Note). The vans left the lobby at 7 and we were at the worksite by 7:30. It was fairly cool when we got there. But that changed quickly once the sun rose over the mountains. (Note: Monterrey sits in between two mountain ranges. These beautiful mountains provided many wonderful sights each morning when we arrived onsite.) Things were a bit confused at first cause nobody knew what they needed to do. It took a couple of hours but by lunchtime everything was running smoothly. Robert and I dug up dirt and filled the space between the outside retaining wall and the foundation of the actual wall for the building. There were all kinds things to be done. A lot of the older ladies made rebar for the columns that we’d be pouring later on in the week. The kids from the two youth groups that joined us did various task mainly revolving around moving dirt from one place to the other. We all thought this was just busy work but found out later on in the week that it actually served a purpose (Note on the Purpose: When we got there the site was basically a gravel and dirt lot with a basic outer foundation built. The ground was very uneven so we had to move the dirt from the high spots to the low in order to even it out. The ground had to be relatively even so it would be ready for the floor to be poured at a later date.) . My roommate Patrick and another guy, Jason (More on Jason in the ‘Fun Part’), mixed cement and mortar with the cement mixer. The older men and some of the young guys started laying block for the walls. They had too many people doing that so Robert and I kept digging until after lunch.
Lunch— Gotta talk about that. Some ladies from an Assembly of God Church just up the street from our worksite cooked the most incredible food each day. We’re talking really good Mexican dishes that I don’t know the name of as well as regular American dishes with a Mexican twist. It was all good. I mean ALL good. Tamales, Quesadias, Refried Beans. Spaghetti, some sort of fillet mignon concoction with chicken stuffed with veggies and wrapped in bacon. Each day got better and better. The meals were awesome. And the ladies were so nice. We ran out of words to thank them at the end of the week. Lunch was certainly a highlight of each day.
After lunch, Robert and I started to support the block layers (aka wall guys). We kept their mortar boards fully stocked with mortar, replenished their stock of cinderblocks when they ran out, got water for them to keep the mortar moist. The most exhausting task was moving the wheel barrels full of mortar back and forth between the different wall crews and the mixer. I didn’t do that often but stepped in when needed. It was hard work. After lifting your 100th cinder block in a 3-hour time span see, if you’re not a little tired. It beat digging though so we kept at it because as the day went on more and more folks dropped out and started trying to find shade (of which there was very little.) We worked overtime that first day. We were supposed to get done around 3 pm and didn’t wrap up until 4:30 or so. We didn’t get back to the hotel until about 5:00.
That was a typical day on the worksite. For the sake of space (I’m already on my 3rd page.) I won’t do a day-to-day run down. Each day was pretty much the same. Wake up early. Work until 12:00 looking forward to an awesome lunch. Eat that awesome lunch. Work a few more hours before calling it quits and heading back to the hotel.
Before I close I do have to mention what Robert and I along with a few others did for the rest of the week. On Tuesday, enough of the walls had been put up that they were ready to have the columns poured. The columns are very important because they provide major support for the second floor of the building and help stabilize and connect the various sections of the walls. The older guys built the forms (or molds) for the columns and then wired them in place for us. The pouring job involved pouring buckets and buckets and buckets full of cement into the form until it was filled almost to the top and then letting it sit there overnight or at least several hours until it solidified into a solid column. Seems simple enough but execution of that was exhausting. We had to put up scaffolding next to the form we were going to work on, fill buckets with cement from the wheel barrel brought over from the mixer. Lift up said bucket (which is very heavy mind you) off the ground and hand it to another team member who is standing on a low set walk board on the scaffold who passes the bucket up to the guy doing the pouring on the upper walk board. That was fun. I’m serious, pouring was fun. We developed a system that allowed us to work as a well-oiled machine. Justin (Big TN farm boy/slash top college football prospect) lifted the buckets off the ground. Either Justin’s friend, Chris, or me were the middle lifters. My boy Robert poured the buckets into the form. Katie kept the buckets rinsed with water when they weren’t being used so that the cement wouldn’t stick to them. Nathan (cool kid from one of the youth groups. Cookeville if I remember correctly.) caught the buckets when Robert was done with them. We were a machine I tell you. It was fun. I ended up doing all the pouring jobs except the actual pouring (which Robert was really good at). I even did the cement wheel barrels. Speaking of which, Kim (from Somerville) along with others hauled wheel barrels for us, which was great. Kim is buff. Strong girl in a small package. Very cool. She was moving those wheel barrels like they were nothing and never seemed to get tired. If she wasn’t doing the barrels she was shoveling dirt or doing something else. She got the hardest worker award at the end of the week. It should have been called the Energizer Bunny award cause she kept going and going and going…. Final word on the pouring crew. It may seem corny for folks who weren’t there but being on the pouring was great because it gave us a sense of purpose. We had a specialized job that important. (All the jobs on the site were important but ours felt more important because we did it day in and day out.) There was natural down time built into the job, which was nice. There was only one mixer on the site so when they switched over to making mortar, we got to sit and rest a little bit until they started cranking out more cement. The down time was nice cause we got to talk and kid around with each other. It was sort of like getting to know you time. Those breaks even culminated into a budding romance between Justin and Katie. Aww…. Ain’t that sweet. (I distinctly remember Sarah, Katie’s sister, saying that they both had boyfriends at the beginning of the trip.) Justin’s big muscles must have made Katie forget about her other boo back in Arkansas. Interesting.
Hopefully this paints a fairly decent picture of our workweek. As I’ve stated before we had a blast. It felt great doing something for other people who wouldn’t have had the means to accomplish it by themselves. It made you feel like we were really doing something for God’s Kingdom. I pray that that church will be a light in the surrounding area for many years to come. Stay tuned for part II, the ‘Fun Part’, where I detail what went down after the sun went down. Coming soon (probably tomorrow since this one took me practically all day today.)

Peace and God Bless.

Well no Mexico update. Tommorow I promise. I’ve been working on my web page today. Resurrecting it from the dead after years of neglect and an untimely death at the hands of Geocities. It will rise again.
Got an email from one of the girls we met in Mexico (more on her when the Mexico update comes) today. That was nice. I wrote her back and tried my best to translate it into Spanish. Her English is pretty good so I also sent her the english version a) cause she needs to practice her english b) as a backup in case my translation is completely unreadable (a definate possiblity).
Well gotta go. I’m tired and I want to get in a couple of rounds of Gran Turismo 3 before my eylids collapse. Plus gotta go to bed a little early so I can get up and watch the World Cup semifinal.
TTFN (Ahh, a Winnie the Pooh reference. $ 1 Million Dollars to the person who remembers what it means.)

Made it back from the Mexico trip. Will do a complete rundown tomorrow while I’m at work. It’s not like I’ll have anything better to do. It’s summer time and I work for a school district. Gotta love it.

P.S. Check out Zero 7 Simple Things. 14 Tracks of instrumental 70′s jazz, soul, funk, and rock with some nice vocal tracks thrown in here and there for good measure. That CD was stuck in my CD player the whole trip. That and the new Doves CD. Both great disks. Great music. Easy to listen too. Good lyrics (when there were lyrics). Usually I burn out on CDs after a few days because I play them non-stop for the first few days and then they get relegated to the CD rack. But the truly great ones never get old. I think these are going to fall into that catagory. Especially the Zero 7 one. Classic. Well like I said I’ll write about the Mexico trip tomorrow. It will have to be in two parts since there were two distinct parts of the trip. The work part and the fun part. (That’s not to say that there wasn’t any fun in the work cause there was. We had a blast.) One word in reference to the fun part….. Señoritas!!!! Until tomorrow.