Emiliano Mancilla

The alarm woke me up early in the morning as I had my first shift at 7:30. I could hear everyone moving, trying to ignore the non pleasant sound coming from my phone. I dressed quickly and went straight to reception, which to my surprise, had the computer and the lockers back. 

There I would be finally meeting Darya, a cute 1.80 Russian girl who seemed determined to teach me how to do things perfectly. With the personality of a commander, she gave me the precise instructions for the shift opening, this happening while I was unsuccessfully trying to make her laugh. 

We opened the kitchen, gave it a quick clean and prepared the breakfast (which would be just setting the coffee machine and putting cereal, fruit and oatmeal in a table). Then we went to clean the restrooms, which would be the toilets, sinks and showers. Funny thing to think that I moved from working in a bank to cleaning toilets in order to get a place to sleep. I was sure that the people back in México would feel sorry for me, but since I felt miserable doing what they did, it didn’t feel that terrible. In fact, it felt exciting that in a way I was “starting from the bottom”. 

We were finishing the second of three toilets when Erick and Lina arrived out of nowhere and started helping us, being a great relief as I used them to my advantage in order to make Darya laugh, as they would find funny the things I told her and would react, provoking her to react too. Also, I could notice that Lina was a quiet but extremely dedicated person, the other guys would have to tell her to stop cleaning in order to move on. 

We needed to clean two restrooms and 1 social room before 10:15, then we would have 15 minutes to have some breakfast and at 10:30 we would clean the kitchen, the rooms, and take the trash out, which was the disgusting part. 

When we finished I got the news that they were making my room a temporary room for volunteers, and as I was the only one who wasn’t staying in the other rooms, it meant that I had a room for myself. Also I saw that there were two guys arriving, John and Alessandro, that were supposed to arrive the next day.

I remember playing UNO with the guests and other volunteers during the evening, nothing interesting was happening, just me adapting to the other people from the hostel, until I saw Lina, looking beautiful, getting in the room.

“Hey Lina, we are playing UNO, would you like to play with us?” A voice emanated from the table 

“No thanks guys, but enjoy!” And she sat at the table next to the corner with her red notebook. 

When we finished the game, Erick (who started to look pretty similar to Pascual) was sitting next to her, but as it seemed like everyone was doing their own thing I decided to approach that pretty girl, who I could see was moving her pen from side to side through her notebook. 

“Is that one of the notebooks where you write all the things you’re grateful for?”

“No, why would I?” She answered after a little chuckle 

“I don’t know, I just met 2 girls this year that had a book were they wrote that kind of stuff, I though it was a thing” 

“Oh sounds like a good idea, but no, the closest thing I have is my diary” 

“And were you writing about the day before I came?” 

“No, I’m trying to draw” 

“That’s cool, like a portrait or a cartoon?”

“No, I was trying to draw this” And she showed me picture of some buildings. 

“And how’s is it going, can I see?”

“Not great, I don’t know how to do it” And she showed me an exceptionally horrendous drawing full of confusing lines, it seemed like nobody told her how to change from 2 dimensions to 3 when she was a kid. 

“Can I see it too?” Erick got into the conversation

“Sure”

“I studied drawing when I was in college” He said

“Really, that’s really cool” I replied

And then he told us a little bit about his life in uni and then explained us how to draw in 3d. 

“Ohh I think I can do better than Lina” said cheeky me

And then I did a quick one that was much better and started bullying her for a little bit, then Erick continued explaining her what she needed to do and I left, I had a strange feeling that there was something going on between those two, those so called energies, that tension that you feel between people when they are not giving you as much attention as they are giving the other person… but couldn’t tell.