Part I, Maunabo, Puerto Rico with the Fuller Center, Nov. 24 - 26, 2018

Patty took me to the Phoenix Airport Saturday morning.  I flew on a completely full plane from Phoenix to Newark.  The flight from Newark to San Juan was less full and I got upgraded to First Class.  With the flight delayed for an hour and then in turbulence for the first half of the flight, I took a nice nap and then woke for a wonderful dinner after midnight.  I arrived in San Juan around 2:00 a.m. and stayed at the airport hotel.  After breakfast and class work Sunday morning, I did laps in the airport to get in my 15,000 steps - the airport was not large, so it was many laps.  Around 2:00, I saw our team leader Joe and others starting to gather and around 3:00 our team headed for Maunabo, about 90 minutes from San Juan, and then to the community of Calzada.  Here is our first sunset.

Five males were in one house across the street from where we had our meals - my roommate Mike and I had set up our mosquito nets over the air mattresses where we slept.

There were eleven volunteers and we split into three groups.  I was with the group that worked on Ben's home - he is 70 and lives alone.  A prior team had resealed the roof.  Our tasks were: scrape mildew/mold and old paint, and then paint the exterior walls; replace two interior doors; and fix one exterior door.  One of my first observations was this snail on the wall.

Monday night, we were sitting on the veranda after dinner and four of the neighborhood teens came by with their horse.

It was warm and humid - daytime highs were around 85 degrees with 80 - 85% humidity.  We drank more water than you can imagine, but we all survived just fine.