Mexico Day 59 - Month 2

So I know I haven't exactly been consistent with my blogging this month but to my defense there have been a crap ton of groups here and I have been working pretty hard. Fortunately, I have been attempting to take quite a few pictures so here they are....

A couple weeks ago we were totally crossin' the border into Texas to do some storage work and Walmart/Target/Traditional American Store run(s) on the other side. Ironically, the first thing I did when we crossed over and were picking up stuff from a friend who lives in Texas, was drink a huge hand-full of tap water.....simply because I could. It was crazy being back in the states because you actually notice a HUGE difference when you pass from the border of Mexico to the border of Texas when you are only a few miles away from a whole other country. It's as if you are on a whole new planeta and it was a very surreal experience even after only living here for two months.

David (the capitán of La Casa Hogar Bethany), Steve, and I all went to La Casa Hogar Bethany a while ago to install some bunk-beds and bring them new mattresses to sleep on. I think the picture of the "Before" speaks for itself.....Three-inches of egg crates is hardly considerable as a bed. However, one of the things that is unique to Bethany that not all children's homes can say is that they truly are a family. The care-takers there are probably some of the nicest people I have seriously met in my whole life and the kids are just straight up tough sons of guns.

Yesterday we went on a bike-riding field-trip to a local park with Bethany and I was paired with one of the youngest kids in the entire home (excluding infants) and as he traveled at about 2.3 mph on his bicicleta (with training wheels) he fell over greater than or equal to, five times throughout the entire day causing his knee to start bleeding and not one time did he cry. Every time he fell I asked, "¿Estás bien?" and every time he's was like "Yo, what are we waiting around for?" (in Spanish of course). They truly are a family and the director Daniel and other male caretakers are really the father that some of these kids never had and some of them even call Daniel, "Papi."

Last week we had a group of five engineers from a heating/cooling business based in Mason, OH (rep the 5-1-3 fur sure bird) which was pretty sweet. We got a lot of work done with a little amount of people and a little amount of work time which amounted to probably one of the most productive weeks I have experienced since I got here. Unfortunately, the ex-Army Ranger in the group got a little jackhammer-happy a couple times and cracked a main water pipe.....

Did I say crack? I meant completely mutilated the whole thing making the section completely unusable bringing our broken pipe count for that week up to a new record high (for my work teams) of two in three days.

So I simply HAD to put at least one picture of Jahir from La Casa Hogar Douglas up because Jahir is a special individual.....Up until I believe last year, everyone who knew Jahir just kind of thought he was a little "slow" and he didn't really understand when people would talk to him making people think he was just a straight up dumb kid.

Well, last year Jahir's ears were tested at some doctor's office somewhere and it turns out he's deaf....Like REALLY deaf.....I want to say he's about eight years old and has been deaf without knowing it for EIGHT YEARS. Think about that for a second..... He speaks with a slur, you have to speak very loudly/enunciate your words very clearly to him, and he's asked me about six or seven times when I got to Mexico and when I'm leaving and six or seven times I have told him y todavía no entiende but that's okay. From probably around the first time I went to Douglas Jahir has always gravitated towards me. He gives me a hug every time he sees me and one time when he was at the B2B property tagging along with one of the staff I saw him and his face lit up like you wouldn't believe. I feel so bad every time we go on field-trips with Douglas because Jahir always wants to be my partner and every time I have to explain to him numerous times (like usual) that I am working and that I can't play all day like I know he/me would like to. Just a quick side note: one day, out of nowhere, he started calling me "Paco" because I don't think he can say my name so I can now add that forename to my lyrical quiver of Mexican nicknames I have acquired over the past two months which I think is cool pretty sweet. On the upside, he is the only person in all of Mexico that calls me that so I now know that whenever I here a muffled little voice three feet above the ground calling out, "Paco", I know my homie needs me.

I don't know if you can tell what this is by the picture but this is quite possibly the coolest part of all of La Casa Hogar Douglas (minus the people). This is a slide that runs all the way from the church up on the hill all the way down to the Comedor which is amazingly EPIC. Now at first glance one may think, "Wait a minute, that's made of concrete and there's no railing and there is no padding and blah, blah, blah...." One would be missing the point. This is the essence of Mexico (at least Monterrey) all wrapped into one object. In the states you would need the proper permits and licensing to pour your own concrete and do construction and blah, blah, blah, but in Mexico that is not a problem.

In Mexico things are just ghetto enough to where you can kindasorta build whatever, wherever. In the states, little kids cry ever two seconds when they fall down and sometimes just cry because they want attention, but here the kids are tough as nails and only cry when something more profound than a scraped up knee is wrong (except when it comes to soccer when everyone's huevos se van adults and kids, and everybody turns into a crybaby for no apparent reason when you accidentally bump there foot or they fall down, but that's a different story for a different day). All politically correct malarkey aside, the slide is REALLY fun.

If you are un jefe del tobogán como yo than you will be really hardcore and go down without any cardboard or broom to keep your booty safe. Depending on the time of year and the extra material laying around, sometimes they will put water down it or enhance the experience with some other use of impressive ingenuity. It's funny to watch group members watch the kids go down because as they go down every American bone in there body is saying, "Intervene! Someone's going to get hurt and one of these cute little kids are going to cry and I will feel like soooooooooooo terrible!" But truth is: the majority of the people who get "hurt" on the slide (and by hurt I mean scraped knee or skinned hand) are the group members 'cause they ain't got nothin' on our Monterrey flavor, so go and call the Savior, 'cause these chavos are so hardcore and have so much Mexican legitimacy that they're gonna make-yeah........................................cry.

What.

-N8