Making new friends

After having been away from the house on the first day (well, to meet with Brian and Rosalie, but still), we spend the second day here in Su Case helping in the house with gardening (planting a lot of new trees!), cleaning, painting and cooking the evening meal for the house (let the German make Philly Cheese Steak - never done it before). When doing this we got to meet the people in the house: the community members, the families they take in, the visitors. Su Casa offers hospitality to young mothers and their kids from Central America as well as from the neighborhood. The families speak mostly Spanish only, but Ina is fluent in Spanish and everybody translates.

In the evening we were asked to share our slides about the European CW houses and communities - most of the people here never thought about CW houses abroad. We shared experiences and hope and depression - and before going to bed we knew we had found new friends.


The third day we spend with doing errands and some sightseeing. I, Chris, had broken the nice electric kettle in the kitchen during cleaning, stupid me, so Susan and I went with the car to get a new one - which wasn't as easy as we thought. Good thing though was that we got to have two of the famous Chicago Hot Dogs on our way - something I had longed for all these days  ;-))


So we went back to the car this morning after two days of not using it and we suprisingly found a gift of the city of Chicago attached to the front window:

Yes, we got a ticket, and an expensive one. On arrival Monday night were not aware that we are not allowed to park on this side of the street on Thursday mornings because of the citys street cleaning ... oh well, no use to be angry about it, it's already there. No we have to sort out how to pay it!

To make up the anger about that Susan and I went for a walk along Lake Michigan and Ina went into town - by bike!