Day One

Today has been a full day. I got up at 6:45 and it was surprisingly cold despite the fact that I had turned the air conditioning off before going to bed. I had cheerios with yogurt for breakfast (there was no milk). Then Colleen (the other newby) and Buddy and I went to the office for some orientation. They told us how to greet volunteer groups, divvy up chores, grocery shopping, etc. There was a quick lesson on how to use the blackberries. (I'm still not really sure how to use mine. I will need to look at the manual...) Then we headed out to another village - Pearlington. The project for the day was to put up the dining tent. The top of the tent was on the ground and the poles to hold it up were in a pile by the kitchen. One part of the tent was not the right part, so we had to take off old velcro and put on new velcro so that it could be attached to the other pieces. Then we had to lace the pieces together with rope (which gave me some lovely blisters). We finally got it all put together and got the poles on and straightened it out. Then we realized there were some huge wrinkles in the top and we couldn't fix it as it was because we (I) had accidentally laced the tent around the tent pole. So we had to take it back down, unlace half of it, straighten the tent, and put it back up. Very exhausting.
At that point we called it a day and got into our various trucks to return to our delightful trailers. Colleen and I stopped at Smoothie King (very yummy!) on the way back to Orange Grove. We raided the kitchen for dinner. (Henry had made chicken parmesian recently and there were leftovers!) We showered and then Buddy, Colleen, Chris, and I hung out on Chris' "porch" (plywood on the ground) and talked for a couple hours. Colleen and Chris will be leaving for their village (Olive Grove) tomorrow and I will be heading back to Pearlington to help out.
I have not been able to get on the internet yet because someone password protected the Orange Grove computer, but no one knows who. So none of the programs on the computer can be opened and no one can access the internet without the password. Except no one has the password. So we'll see what happens with that...
Anyway, today has been a good day and I am ready to call it quits and get some sleep. Tomorrow should be another busy day.