Yesterday I saw some men pouring concrete and wanted to go help them.

It was this time last year that I was in my first week of summer staffing in Mexico - we were washing everything that had been covered with a layer of dust, getting to know each other, encouraging the cockroaches to find a different place to live.

I have been missing Reynosa and the Isaiah 55 staff desperately recently - wanting to be there so strongly that I'm surprised how much it hurts sometimes.

Every day there's something that reminds me of last summer. I've joked that working for Conference Services is like what I did last year only air conditioned and without cockroaches, but it's weird to actually see so many similarities. Last week we formed an assembly line to get a mountain of pillows from the basement of one dorm to another. This of course made the think of the assembly lines on the job site to move several thousand concrete blocks. Putting conference brochures in each dorm room reminded me of throwing towels on the bunk beds. Betsy, our student boss, once made a comment about the scary linen room, and I couldn't help but think of the laundry room in Casa Verde. It stunk so badly of refuse that I held my breath as long as I could every time I had to go in and still felt my stomach turn. Today I drove one of the Wheaton minivans filled with bags of blankets blocking my view out the back window. It reminded me of the time I backed one of the big vans through the gate at Casa Verde, with plenty of guidance from amused Mexican men. And the times I managed to scrape the side of the van going out of the gate. . . Shopping for groceries makes the think of the shopping trips I made into Texas last summer. A couple days ago I saw corn husks for sale - the things that you use to wrap tamales. I ate those every Monday.

It's interesting to compare the team of summer staff with this the Conference Services team. I don't foresee any of the tension and difficulties that were so difficult last summer, but I wonder if those only arose because of the situation we were in. Much as some of the relationships between summer staffers were strained, in many ways we grew close and comfortable with each other so quickly. We knew each other.

I'm finding the trickiest part of the job is knowing how to interact with my team mates. This afternoon was the first shift behind the desk. Usually, I think, time behind the desk will be alone, but today there were at least three of us there at once, with little traffic of conference guests. This was hard for me. But I even have a hard time when there are just two of us working. I don't really know how to get to know my teammates. Our shared experiences lack the edge that propels conversations to a deeper level, as happened between Ashley and me last summer. I really hope this changes. Fred's gonna wonder why he hired me.

It's still a good job.
And I still miss Mexico.