So, in the midst of everything happening to us, we finally decided to look for work.
Since our girls initially hitchhiked to their jobs (they arrived with job offers, unlike us), the people who gave them rides would leave their contacts, and some even offered them work. One of these people turned out to be Victor, an immigrant from Honduras who needed one person for Construction work. When we went to see Victor one evening, he immediately said, 'One of you come to work tomorrow at 7:00 AM.' The job involved painting houses. So, I decided to go and earn at least a little money for now. He promised to pay a decent rate—10 dollars an hour. For painting, that's certainly low, but it was at least something. The work wasn't difficult—painting houses, sometimes fences. It was easy to earn a hundred dollars a day. The downside was having to work with Latinos, who are decent people themselves, but they talk about the same thing constantly. That got old fast. But I didn't have much of a choice yet. Victor turned out to be a good boss. He paid on time and even bought us food.
After a week of working for Victor, he invited me and all my friends to his party on Friday. In general, it seemed to me that all Latinos work according to this pattern: all work week they CONSTANTLY talk about their FRIDAY PARTY and how great it will be. Naturally, I wondered what kind of cool party it must be to talk about it all week. And naturally, I gathered everyone, having promised them it would be a lot of fun, took the boss's car, and we all went to the party. In the end, it was fun, but I expected better. I didn't see anything 'THAT' special worth talking about all week. What struck me was how easily Victor gave me his car to use—like, 'here are the keys, drive wherever you want.' He didn't care at all if I had a license or knew how to drive. An American wouldn't have given up his car like that.
When I came back to painting on Monday, the Mexicans started telling me again that they were having a super party on Friday, like 'bring the Russian girls and come.' I said, 'Nah, forget it guys, I'm out.' Keep reading—it gets even more interesting!
