Lucia, continued

Well, we´ll see how this entry goes. I´m back close to home now at the Sticky Keyboard Internet Cafe which has a new feature--timers on the computer. I´m a pretty slow and inaccurate typist and the Spanish keyboards seem to have significant rearrangements on top of it all. I´m not sure what happens when time runs out and I only brought enough money for half an hour!

Anyways, to continue, Lucia has been a big part of my life the past two weeks in her presence and absence. First of all, I´m not used to having someone in my ¨space¨all day. Also, we´ve been a little isolated with the kids in school all morning and some of them sick the first two and a half weeks. The missions team here had their hands full with an RUF team of 24 from the States and some of the families have had sick kids as well. Since I wasn´t teaching English or taking Spanish yet, I took the time to go to the mercado with Lucia three times (she´s a pretty shrewd shopper) and to ask her for a lot of vocabulary. She´s been very indulgent and patient, but since I´ve started lessons, I´ve discovered, too indulgent. She´s let pass some significant mispronunciations!

One of the things that amazes me about Lucia is that she is only twenty years old! She is married and has a three and a half year old daughter. They are members of the mission church. Lucia usually works full-time cleaning the main mission building where the language institute, seminary, college ministry, and administrative offices are housed. I think she is enjoying being on loan to us. She said that the work is not as hard and she loves to cook. She´s definitely used to hard work though. Apparently she first started working at eight years old! Her mistress beat her for not washing the dishes properly, so she stopped working and didn´t take another job until she was ten. That employer taught her a lot, including how to read and iron. She said that when she was pregnant she would spend four hours a day walking around the city with her mother, gathering recyclables from the trash for money.

Well, time to go again--I ran out of time at Sticky Keyboard yesterday and am finishing up at the nice internet store near the kids´school this morning. Both times I checked email first, so I ran out of time. More photos to come!!