1st productive day

This is Lincoln. Today was my first productive day of working around the shelter. We had a problem with the sewer backing up inside the shelter in the children's bathroom. That was tuesday night and wednesday was a national holiday. Because it was voting day, everything was closed, so we couldn't rent a sump pump to pump out the septic tank. So today I had to take David's Suburban into downtown to rent a "water pump", which the locals call a "wootah poomp." It was only my second time driving on the roads, so driving the Suburban on the crazy roads was like a trial by fire, but I did fine and now I feel a lot more confident on the roads. We got the pump and I helped the two gardners, Johannes and Cipoh, set it up to pump out the tank. Boy, was it stinky! We got it done, so that's good to have out of the way. (Actually Johannes did most of the dirty work.) Not one word of complaint. He's a real trooper. I spent the rest of the day tearing out the old electrical wiring in the new apartments and laying out the new electrical system. Tomorrow I'll go shopping to compare prices and figure out where we want to buy construction material from. All exciting stuff, I know. It was good to have a good days work under my belt, and feel productive.