We sawed, We sanded, We stained…We conquered.

Julie arrived on a Tuesday. I’d spent the time between my visit to St. Kitts and getting her in Puerto Plata waiting, in the capital and at a friend’s site, for my community members to get it together and get us the land for the library already. (They finally did the Thursday after Julie got here.)

She arrived without her bags, as has become typical for people traveling to visit me. The first night we went to a hotel with AC (thanks Dad,) and ate (and drank) our hearts out. It was all soda, I swear. The next morning we swam and walked along the beachfront. Then we went to Cabarete to meet up with some of my friends who were celebrating their birthdays. We spent the night at another hotel with a pool, and swam again later. We had pizza and went to some bars and saw a man eating fire! The next morning included a ice cream-cake breakfast, with some leftover pizza followed by a sweaty journey home. Julie had brought with her 2 checked bags (with which we were reunited in Cabarete) full of surprises for me, including over 50 lbs of books for the library! Traveling all over the north coast of the island with these bags was a little less than ideal, as was the fact that every single bus driver tried to rip us off. I handled this repeated situation a little less-than gracefully, but Julie was a good sport about everything. Once we loaded up on groceries, we headed back to my site and arrived tired, sweaty and quite covered with dust.
We spent the next few days trying to figure stuff out with the supposedly completed land agreement. It was a little annoying to have to wait for the answers from my neighbors, but eventually it all got worked out and I am happy to say that we should be beginning construction on Monday! While we waited we spent our days organizing the books that Julie had brought me and playing softball once it wasn’t quite so hot outside. We also played a bit with Lina and Kitty… mostly Julie.

A few days ago we went to the hardware store. We ordered some wood and nails and whatnot to build a bookshelf for the library. The first step was measuring, then sawing, which both attracted some viewers. Once we had it sawed we sanded the wood and then stained it. By that time it was dark outside so we had to leave the second coat of stain for the following day. That afternoon we were finally able to begin constructing the bookcase and found that bookshelves take a long time to complete! Again we had onlookers and trying to drive those nails into our low-quality boards with an audience was quite difficult. This is largely due to the fact that the onlookers were all males and they had spent the past 2 days making bets with one another whether or not 2 American girls could actually accomplish such a huge task as to build a 4.5 foot bookshelf.