Life at Gautier April 18

Welcome to the land of the warm and humid. this morning it was 70 degrees when we got up and we were covered in low lying fog. Temps are in the mid 80's which seems so hot. The guy thought he might air condition my office today or tomorrow. I said he'd get a big hug if he got it asap. I can't work in the office during the middle of the day.

Things keep improving. My upright freezer was delivered yesterday so now we can have more ice on hand. People usually freeze their water bottles and put in with their lunch and are still cold by lunchtime. One village had several with heat stroke Mon as everyone needs to take a 10 min break every hour and drink water. We send extra water with the groups as they can't run out. My commercial stove was promised over a week ago but haven't seen it yet. We are patiently waiting for it.

We are back into the world. I had been told I could get a newspaper delivered to the village. So I bought the Sun Herald this morning so I could call them. Well, the Sun Herald out of Gulfport won the Pulitzer for public service for 2006. You may have seen the news about it but the paper never missed a day of publishing. People stayed at the office thru the storm, staff were fed and sheltered for weeks even though some of them lost everything. There are some great tributes to the employees of the newspaper. Anyway they will deliver us one free newspaper for volunteers to share as we often feel at a loss at what is happening outside of the village.

Have a great day and think about you back in cool Oregon.

Phyllis