Our weekend

I met Mama about 4:40 in front of the building where I was teaching. She and Crystal, who had attended to the class with me, talked for a spell about Color Street and we went off to get me some dinner. They had served pizza for lunch, but I ate only one small slice. I do not like to eat while I am teaching. It interrupts my breathing if I have food in my belly. So, by the time Mama and I got together, I was hungry enough to eat. Mama had had a very successful day shopping. She was excited about all the great deals and wonderful finds of the day – which she presented to me with some flair. We decided to leave our trip to Galveston for Sunday, because by the time we had shared my dinner, it was going on 6:20 pm and it would be dark by the time we got to Galveston. Instead we had a “fun” evening watching HGTV.

Mama and I left the farm Friday morning to head towards Houston. It was a fabulous day. In fact, the weather was great all weekend. We could have gotten a lot done at the farm, but that was not to be. We did not hurry on the drive, but we still made it to Houston in time for me to meet with the client so I could see the room where we would be presenting the class. I am always a bit anxious to see the training site because the variety of venues over the years has been wide and memorable. This was one of the more memorable ones.

The “classroom” was a large upper room that had been used for general storage. Something akin to an attic. In anticipation of the class the room was being repainted so all the furniture and sundry items in storage had been moved to the center of the room to clear the walls for the painters. It was a mess. It was dirty. There were no tables, only some aged chairs. When I looked the place over, I asked about tables, the functionality of the projector, how many we were planning for in the class, etc. I left the training site a bit apprehensive, but these things have a way of working out.

When I returned Saturday morning, the tables and chairs had been dragged into the room and the floor had been hurriedly swept. Fifteen chairs in various stages of disrepair had been added to the table arrangement. I quickly get the tables and chairs positioned the way I wanted and started to set up for the class. Still there was dust on everything – the tables and chairs especially. I cleaned my area with what was available and the attendees dealt with the dusty tables and chairs as they were accustomed to doing. The floor was far dirtier after the class since the dirt from the workers mud-caked boots sluffed off under the tables as the day wore on. That is probably the reason we were not set up in the nicer conference room on the same floor of the building.

I did not find out until test time that seven of the fifteen who attended the class were very limited in their ability to understand English until the test was taken. Those seven men, a person proficient enough to translate the test and I went into the separate nicer conference room and struggled to translate the very formal English of the test into the informal Spanish vernacular familiar to those who were listening to the translation. It took over forty minutes to get the twenty-one questions and the corresponding answers into workable Spanish. Eventually, all but one passed the test. The one person who failed was quite happy with his lack of success. He did not want the responsibility that would have come with a passing score. All in all, it was a very good class. Even though I had only two English as a first language participants.

We took our time Sunday morning. We got to the seawall in Galveston around 9:20 am. That left us an hour to walk the beach before we listened to Sunday School and the morning service via Facebook. We both missed being in church that morning, but it was nice to be able to participate virtually while we had the cool ocean breeze blowing on us. While we were listening to the service, we relocated to the restaurant we had chosen from a list of those recommended to us and finished the service there with very a nice view of the harbor.

We had a great meal at Katie’s Seafood House right on the harbor in Galveston and headed home from there. Several Buckee’s stops later, we got home about 7:40 pm. It was a memorable weekend for both of us.