Juarez Hammer Time! -- Day 6
Robert & Laura
We make it back home and then to church.
Fri, Feb 19, 2010
6:10 am
Tada! On the the very last day in Juarez my alarm worked perfectly and
got me up!
And a good thing, too, as today we need to get all our gear packed so
that we can stand in line to get into America. We're taking off right
after breakfast, so that means packing while I'm half awake, which
takes a while longer ("Do I put this on or pack it?").
7:00 am
Okay, I'm all packed, the room I've slept in is nice and clean (and it
was a darn nice room--it had its own bathroom, its own heater and none
of the other three guys in it snored!).
Kevin is in negotiations with Mrs. Zuniga over the purchase of one the
paintings done by a child in the arts program. It shows a stylized
peach (in a semi-cubist style), but is currently part of an art
exhibition in the dining room. Once the show is finished, she'll speak
with the artist's agent and negotiate a purchase price for Kevin.
Hey--you may laugh, but if this kid turns out to be the next Picasso,
Kevin is going to look like a genius!
8:01 am
We're in the van following Fr. Dan. Our van is driven by Kevin and Ed
is driving the van following us. Fr. Dan takes a right. We go
straight. Ed follows us. With 13 back seat drivers, Kevin soon
realizes the error of his ways and turns left into an "Auto Zone"
parking lot. Ed follows us.
We pull out of the parking lot across the street and into the street
that Fr. Dan went down.
God knows what Ed did, because that's the last we saw of him. Maybe he
encountered some Juarez Triangle that swallowed up his van. It's hard
to imagine that he could get lost in the 20 feet of the parking lot,
but apparently, he did.
8:07 am
We've been sitting here behind Fr. Dan this whole time, waiting for Ed
to show up. We know he's not far, because every once in a while, we
see him drive by a couple of blocks away. But he never makes the
correct turn.
8:08 am
Yay! Ed finally makes the correct turn and finds us! Fr. Dan has all
his sheep together and we're ready to cross the border.
8:18 am
We're at the end of the line to cross into America, wondering what the
rush was. At this crossing, you have to pay to get into the USA (it's
a toll bridge), and it costs about $2 (23 pesos).
8:27 am
There are various vendors trying to sell us things all along the line.
Mostly candy. There's also window washer guys who start cleaning the
window until you shoo them away. A lady with a guitar and a great
voice sings a heart-breaking song to us, so I give her a dollar.
8:43 am
We're straddling the US/Mexico border. Half of us are still in
Mexico.
9:25 am
We've managed to get clear of customs (they checked ALL our passports
and ran them through the system). They pulled Ed's van (carrying all
our luggage) over for a while to ask him (once again) how come he
needed so much luggage for 11 people. They even pulled down a couple
of bags at random to check and see if we were smuggling anything other
than dirty underwear (plenty of that, but no contraband).
8:30 pm
The rest of the day is taken up with hanging around various airports
and climbing into metal tubes that hurtle through the air at 500 mph
until we end up back in Seattle. Yay! Everyone arrives safe and
sound!
(Except for Simon and Kristin. They also arrive safe and sound, but
not until about 1:30 am on Saturday.)
Sun, Feb 21, 2010
2:30 pm
This morning in church we showed the videos that I worked on all day
yesterday (hey, it beats doing laundry).
The first one shows Fr. Jim introducing each day's work followed by
"time-lapse" footage of the house being built (the "time-lapse"
footage is me taking a picture from the same location every so often).
It's fun to watch Fr. Jim sag more and more each day until by the last
day, he's barely standing up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXENRgvk1g8
The second video shows all the people working on the build, and I have
fun with the background music. (The first song is "Fanfare for the
Common Man.") It went over pretty well in church (although at this
point, YouTube has decided that a 30 clip of a song violates copyright
so they've cut the sound):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_lKlB83Mys
At the 8:00 am service, Fr. Jim and I were the only ones there so we
spoke about the trip. At the 11:00 am service, a whole bunch of folks
were there, so several of them spoke about their experiences and
impressed the congregation.
This is the last trip log for this trip, which was a lot of fun (and
work). I hope everybody enjoyed it, and thanks to all of those who
have told me how much they liked it.
So long for now!
Robert
Juarez Hammer Time!