2011-05-21, Day 2

8:15
I slept like a baby. At the moment my head got on the pillow I fell asleep and I was the last one in my tent to wake up. Surprisingly two of the three women I share the tent with were already dressed. A miracle to me if you consider that the space of the tent gives us just enough room to unfold four sleeping bags. Good that we are all small and we can put our luggage on the end of the sleeping bag, otherwise there wouldn't be enough space in the tent for everything. I am wondering who Ruben and Patrick bribed to get their own tent ;)
When it became cloudy yesterday after the lunch break, I was kind of happy because it was amazingly hot in our working clothes and less sun and the refreshing wind really made working a lot more comfortable. But now I regret my thoughts because it started to rain in the night. Everything is slightly wet even inside and for sure we can't do the same thing like yesterday. It would be a way too dangerous. Let's see what the volunteer center assigns us to do...

16:40
Actually it stopped raining before we even arrived in RT. The sun came out and within short time most things got dry again. Today we helped at an older lady's house. She requested help from the center because all the things she could do by herself were already done. The house was on a hill and the lady said that it was always a safe place for her family and friends because no tsunami would go so far and high. Well, now the house has disappeared and just the basement is left. She said that her husband and son would spend the whole day in their assigned mini-flat but that she wasn’t the type for that. She has to go out and do things... She wants to move back as soon as possible.
The guys had to do some other things which made them pretty dirty at the end of the day but the women were assigned to collect all the glass in and around the house. There was sooo much of it everywhere and this is of course dangerous. So I spent the whole day collecting glass. Which was harder than it sounds because the glass was not just on the surface, we really had to grab for it. It was amazingly boring and dusty. Sun and light rain were changing frequently. The raindrops at least helped to make it less dusty. As soon as the sun shined, I was dying in my JAR jacket. They are really not good for summer, I hope JAR changes soon to vests or at least to jackets with other material.
After the lunch break, a few volunteers from Toyota who worked on this house already yesterday came. I didn't talk much to them but we had a big group photo session when it was time to say good bye.
The baibai from the lady was really emotional. She brought us something to drink because she wanted to give at least something back. Which was of course not necessary but I can understand that some people can't just accept help without giving something back but her happy face would have been totally enough for me...
I liked working in a place that you know for sure has still an owner. So I don't have to make up stories and can just ask what happened.
When we came back to the volunteer center, there was a sukiyaki party. Some person donated kilos of really good beef (sorry I forgot the name) and the center made a great sukiyaki out of it. We had to take some more pictures as little foreign curiosity but now we are back in the bus. A short stop at a supermarket and then quickly to the onsen. It's not a really nice onsen, quite small and costs nearly 500¥ (I heard something about a discount???) but nobody can make me sleep covered in dust and soil... I totally need a shower...