Yogic Wonder

San Pancho in September is as quiet and slow and wet and hot as it gets.  Restaurants are closed and even taco stand owners can’t be bothered.  There is a grim, subdued look on everyone’s face and it feels like life is on hold, waiting for the weather to improve and  “the temporada” to begin again.

So when 80 fresh faced and exuberant yoga students, their teachers and support staff show up in San Pancho for a week…   you really can’t possibly miss it.

The students were participating  in a yoga retreat offered by Diamond Mountain Institute and many people were close followers of the school and the Lamas.  The school placed great emphasis on the volunteer work that they expected as part of the yogic practice and they offered us help on our bodega project.   They were a wonderful and much needed addition to our work team and we had a very fun day together with the community on Saturday.

The real thing that I remember though is their smiles.  Everyone was smiling and pretty much all of the time.  In contrast to the grim state of San Pancho right now, it was and still is this sort of beacon of happiness that they bestowed on all of us.  So thank you, good luck in your studies… and keep on smiling!

worse before it gets better…. right?

ok.  so a week ago, I took a walk through the bodega and thought, “Wow, we’re gettting there!”  We had the community work day and much of what we worked on were detail type stuff.  It was fun and it was wonderful to imagine that we would be opening again in just 8 weeks or so. I’m getting anxious, the kids ask everyday when the library will be back, we have the scholarship progam in movement and we need a place to work from etc.  Anyways, 1 week ago It felt like the end was near.

and then…

Monday morning we began to remove the roof. Day 1 and 2 went pretty slow and I was wondering if it might be November before we even get the roof off. Then Tutti came to help out and worked up a funky design for them to get the tiles off the roof by sliding them down two pieces of steel beams and its been a madhouse since.  Today is Sunday and the entire bodega roof will be off by the end of the afternoon.

The bodega looks like a war zone. There is broken tile debris, rotting leaves and dirt everywhere.  The sun shining down without any shade protection is hot and intolerable, becoming even more so because the light lets you see all of the places where the oxidation has eaten through the roof beams… holes, where there shouldn’t be holes… ugh.

So I’m telling myself to breathe deep.  This is the turning point, the moment of darkness before the light, the point of reckoning, the test… this is where it gets really bad and then it will get really good… right?

Oct. 24th Community Work Day

Join us and the volunteer team from Home Depot to paint the entire bodega 10:00-3:00 pm!! Please bring your own brushes and rollers. See you there!

Community Work Day #1

The construction has finally arrived at the point where we could use the help of many hands.  We also felt it was time for the community to become more involved in the process (and the work of it all).   It appeared as though that was exactly what people were waiting for as they arrived in droves to help us on our first (of four) community work days that we plan for the new Bodega.

We cleaned bottles, cut plastic, battled back the jungle (with machetes), and an assortment of other jobs that will bring us closer to a finished building.  It was fun and a good reminder that people are excited about the future and the opportunities that the new Centro Comunitario Educativo represents.