Saturday 
                                     June 18, 2016

I'm purposely not counting yesterday as a day in Piura for a few reasons:

1) We didn't actually get to the church until 10:00 AM.

2) We did not go out on a work site.

3) I was also sick-- I'm chalking this up to a mezcla de un dolor de cabeza (headache), el calor (heat), mis vuelos (my flights), y falta de dormir (lack of sleep).

4) I was so exhausted I didn't even want to think about blogging.

Today Mom and I went out with 2 other Americans- Mackenzie and Thomas, both in their 20s. We are helping to put on a bedroom addition to a house. Don't worry! We are with Peruvians who, thankfully, know what they are doing. We dug about 7 post holes while singing the song from "Holes"--- or maybe that was just Mackenzie and me. Then we either got promoted or demoted to nailing plywood to the frames for the walls. I like to think of this as a promotion in that there were times we were in the shade and sitting on the dirt We did have one casualty, though. RIP Erin's black pair of yoga pants. It was not the feral dogs or the nails but a rusty pipe I was using as a bench that did my pants in. Thankfully, we only had 5 minutes before we left for lunch.

It is now 1:45 PM and we have until 3 for siesta. I didn't really understand how much siesta would mean to me until this very moment. It gives me time to stop and reflect on our journey here, not just traveling, but the broader journey. I thought I had an idea of what life down here would be like, having been to Costa Rica and Tunisia and being fairly well-educated about poverty throughout my education, but I was wrong. Everything is so much hotter, dryer, and dustier that I had imagined. I said to Mom when we were digging the holes, "it's like Canton, but hotter and in Spanish!" I left out that it is much poorer too. 

The family whose home we are working on includes Henry, Liliana, and their 3 daughters, all of whom have double names and whom I'm failing to remember. One is Stefanie-Sofia, one may be Claudia-Jimena, and I think the last is Valeria-Rosario. All are extremely nice. Henry works as a gardener for the parish. At one point, Liliana brought us water and after we all accepted it quickly, Mom pulled out one of our empty bottles and waved it, saying "empty!" Naturally, Liliana thought Mom was asking her to fill it up but Mom was trying to show her how happy we were for the water she gave us.

I forgot how satisfying physical labor can be. Your body can feel the work in every part. In my school, almost everything I do is conversation-based- talking to a student about conflicts, collaborating with staff on how to help a student, consulting with the counselors about a particular issue. This work can also be exhausting, but today's work was on a different level-- not harder or easier, just different. It's like working muscles you haven't used in a while. Huh. That analogy actually fits perfectly with how I'm feeling right now. 

On that note, I'm going to go either sleep or color. Yes, I'm that person who colors to relax. We go out again at 3 and then we have Mass at 7 and hopefully Kathleen will be here by then!! So excited to see my "sisser"!       -Erin-