A Few New Friends - Tyler

We arrived in Orica two nights ago and were met by quite a smiley group of locals.  I have about five and a half years of Spanish that I have studied and it´s been quite a while but I decided to try and start up a conversation over dinner.  I had pleasure to meet a woman named Estela.  She was very good at helping me work through my broken Spanish to communicate and told me I speak "bastante bien", which was polite to say the least.  We had a nice conversation, you know the regular stuff, I asked about her children and grandchildren, and she asked how old I was and if I was getting married.
The following day I spent working with cement with Estela and her son in law David as my partners.  I think Estela worked harder than I did, I was surprised.  She taught me how they lay blocks and mix their cement.  She´s quite the mason.  We also all had a good laugh when they tried to teach me how they fling cement against a finished wall like stucko.  I threw it everywhere.  Walls we weren´t working on, the ground, basically anywhere but where it was suppose to be.  It´s a lot harder than it looks.
I am certainly learning a lot, both about the people, and the very different way that they live.
To Pat: Curt says hi
And to my mother: I have not contracted any mortal illnesses as of yet :)

-tyler