4th Day (08/22/08)

Today we started out with an orientation meeting which was very helpful. As the meeting was nearly over, Carmen, the director here at Sonlight, said she needed to see a few of us after. It turns out that we needed to move from one apartment to the next. It was a little nuts because my roommate and I had just begun to unpack and get settled in. We had picked up our 3 month food order as well and Jon had put it all away into cabinets and tossed the boxes. So, we spent the entire day repacking our stuff and then carried all of our bags and boxes from the apartment, around the school, down the street and then down an alley to our new place. We are now staying in what is referred to as the “White House” as it is painted white. The most bizarre thing about our move is that John, one of the construction/maintenance guys here, offered to take our stuff over via the scoop of a tractor he has. We took him up on the offer and moved all of our stuff to the front of the school until we had an entire load for him to take. We packed it up into the scoop and he drove it down the street and into the alley where we unloaded it at our front door. I have a feeling that I may never move again with the assistance of a tractor.

Now that we are in the White House, we are not directly connected to the water supply. We have a concrete reservoir tank in the back. In order to keep this full, we need to run a garden hose from Roger and Norma Alexander’s place over to the tank and let it run for hours. My duty is to monitor the reservoir every few days to ensure that we don’t run out of water. I really hope I don’t forget!

A few more odd things about this house:
The water from the sinks all run out and into the alley which has a very small ditch dug which allows the water to flow down the street, but it runs along the side of the gravel road. Lastly, the security of this house is pretty intense. For starters, we have a concrete wall around with a padlocked gate in front. Once you pass through the gate, the front porch is enclosed with wrought iron and another padlocked gate/door. Then, you have your normal metal front door which is dead-bolted. On top of this, every window is covered with iron bars to keep people out. To top it all off, we have an electric fence that goes around the top of the concrete wall and is attached to iron spikes that stick out of the top of the wall.