What Lucia told me about today

Sylvia and Lucia came by to discuss English and Spanish classes. Sylvia is going to do 6 hours a week of private lessons with me and we will speak English with Eugenia to help her with her English classes. We got to chatting about work and what time we get up (about 6:30 - well Jonathan anyway to fix my coffee). After they all laughed about Jonathan getting up to fix my coffee Lucia told me about her husband's new job with Minesa. Actually, it is either his new job or the one he just applied for, I am not exactly sure. There were some niceties of grammar I didn't keep up with. Omar has to get up at 12:30 midnight to go help deliver flour, rice, beans etc. maybe chicken, too. Again, it was hard to keep straight because the Pollo Rico is owned by the same people, but I wasn't sure if it was delivered in the same truck.

Anyway, Omar has to ride around all over and deliver two 50 Kilo bags of stuff to stores and restaurants. He is a really skinny guy and I afraid it will be hard for him. Oh well, Lucia says, Nicas are used to working hard. She told me how her nephews - 8, 12 and 14 get up at 2:30 in the morning to go with their father to pick up the cheese he sells in the market. Then they help smoke it and take it to the stand on the road to the market where he sells it. After that they attend classes, then in the afternoon they learn how to make shoes at the shoe shop across the street where they work til 6:00. They go to bed around 8. When the cheese business isn't good, usually in the summer when the price of milk drops, the dad works as an assistant on a bus. He is one of those people you see checking tickets, tossing bikes and market baskets up to the top of the (ancient US school) bus and grabbing people by the hand to pull them in through the emergency exit door as they run up to the bus when it is pulling away.

I told them my kids were complaining about getting up at 5:30 to go to school. I told them, I only managed to sit down and work for one hour today. I didn't tell them that I made more in that hour than the average Nica makes in a week working 48 hours.