This Weekend

i like letting you guys know what we’re up to, and it helps when it’s on the blog — we dont have to tell everyone individually! and i think matt and i realize that all our friends and family friends are here with us in spirit. when we get emails from cortney i can practically see her sitting there giggling and nodding, as she says she does. sometimes when i read emails to matt from her i sit here cracking up, matt pretending to not know me. its sweet.

Travel plans have totally changed. bertha called matt around 9 our time to tell us that they were sending their CHAUFFEUR TO ESTELI FRIDAY TO PICK US UP. let me repeat… CHAUFFEUR…. PICKING US UP. why are they doing this, you want to know? o right, because she wants to take us out to a nice restaurant friday night before we leave for their other house in SAN JUAN DEL SUR where we will swim and i’ll stay in bertha’s room and matt will stay in bertha’s brothers room. i’m flabbergasted, i dunno about you. It’s their kindness. they barely know us and yet they’re doing all these things for us! i checked with our teachers — mine said ®wow! dont pass up this opportunity! thats amazing! we can reschedule our class for tuesday. then you don’t lose any days of school and you can go and you dont have to pay for class next week!® soooooo, i think that’s what is happening. matt isn’t here right now cuz he’s takinga shower and then in 30 minutes berthas calling to tell us when we’re getting picked up. its concievable that we’ll get picked up thursday and go to the beach friday, but i dont think so. either way, we’ll check in again before we leave. we didn’t wanna call with this news until we were 100% sure about what was going on, but i think my parents will be fine with this — a safe place to stay with people who both know how to speak the language here and who are not going to let the stupid gringos (that’s us) out of their sight. i’m excited.

if you REALLY need to talk to my parents i can understand, but i am also checking in with them. i may not be homesick, and you may be sleeping like a log, but i have a feeling my dad a) misses me and b) is sleeping a lot less than you.

alright, i’m off.i havent seen the blog since thursday, i need to email lillian (the woman we know who lives in managua) about things in granada, hotel name, cost, etc, and email my madre as well.

much love, and i’m happy we’re both doing fine again, Hilary

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Next Week

Yes yes indeed leon was a good time, and i would tell you about it now but we have to go soon to do volunteer work, maybe later today once we get back. We do have to run something by you though. We are thinking that next monday will be our last day of class and that after that we’ll go to granada, massaya and then finally to managua, where we will stay in the quaker house on thursday night so we can get to the airport on time for friday morning. We dont want to do a three hour car ride friday morning. Anyway, just have to run this by you so that we can talk to egdelina about it tomorrow morning. It would be helpful if you could respond tonight, before ten, thanks a ton.

Love matt

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Yesterday

“Oh My Gawd, did you hear that?”

Had Chris looked at that back of my neck and seen those suddenly, at-full-attention neck hairs, he wouldn’t have asked.

“The thing is, we have to hear sounds like…”

“Like we’re going to die!”

“Yes, like we’re going to die. Lowering this deck pops nails, stresses joints and compresses wood, so it’ll sound as if it’s gonna fall right off the side of the building, when it won’t. At least I hope it won’t”

We had stacked enough lumber under this deck to build a suburb, and we lowered it using two jacks (one from my truck), and by removing that lumber, stick by stick. It was harrowing, but mostly because of my memory of a roof that almost collapsed on me. Chris wants me to tell that story, and I’m working on it now. The point is, memories only hang around and haunt. All right already, they might also serve to spare a teenager a gruesome death.

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