Sheltered alight! (Casa Vides part 1)

 So, I visited El Paso, TX during my vacation and I stayed at a church shelter (a nice one at that!) The house had a history behind the guy who [TBA] 

After a long hour drive, we got to meet many guests and volunteers that ran the house.

 

The living quarters / eating space were trendy. When I first walked in, I found a bunch of broken / used toys on the floor, assuming one of the kids just left it there. And that's when I met the staff: Tom, John, Justine, and Irine. They were so kind to me and the others, it felt like we suddenly became family. 

It was like any other shelter, the house had a schedule and rules. So we always woke up at 8:30 for breakfast, then lunch, then dinner. The food there is delicious with some of it being fair. My only personal complaint and opinion would be when I was first served salad with the Wish Bone sauce. I almost barfed but managed to keep it in with a steady faux admiration over the salad sauce because that was all they had. No Kuene from Germany. :(

Since the rooms were gender segregated, the males slept in lower floors of the house while the females took the upper levels. We were all paired with black bunk beds, some that shook shakily due to loose screws. 

Friends you say? I immediately made a friend. Maria Alejandra is 9 but she only spoke Spanish and very little English. But I manage to converse with her using via a translate app. Surprisingly, she had an admiration over anime namely Demon Slayer just like me! Her fav characters she fans over are both Nezuko and Rengoku. I was surprised by the fact that she can draw really good. Her look and copy methods are really good, I attempted to do the same with my drawings too. 

You gotta love that Levi drawing of hers. It's sooo cute! So, speaking of Attack on Titan, I introduced her to the Junior High anime series, and she got hooked. Though it was in english dubbed, she loved basic anime facial expressions and comedic scenarios the show puts forth.

One of her accessories is this cute pink and white mobile phone toy that I remember owning. Well, I owned the Finding Nemo one with more button and musical features than this one. This one seemed cheap with only two musical features but gods, the song was cute and catchy. The 7 second song looped over and over, sung in Arabic (?) and ending with a cute anime female voice. It was so cute, I had to request a video recording of the toy.

Later on during my stay here, I used the house's recreational activities. There were toys, puzzles, coloring books, games, and other creative things. My two faviourite toys are the square magnets from Excellerations and the expanding / shrinking spike ball made one year before I was born! 

I began to try out the Pokémon puzzle but 500 pieces wasn’t my taste lol.

I also found both Iron Man and Black Panther chill on an upturned milk crate. Tony and T'challa looked absolutely chilled.

During lunch, my mom taught a few German words to a young man named Gilbert who seemed to fancy each word hand written on his hand. I chuckled in surprise to find Gilbert exclaiming and greeting German words to his Spanish speaking friends. "Guten Tag!" was one of them and I couldn't stop mentally laughing. 

 

They even had a small old Insignia flat screen TV with many Disney DVDs. There were some other Marvel movies as well such as Iron Man 2, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 1 and 2, and lastly Deadpool 2. Never saw any of those movies (except for Iron Man 2). So I and the kids took liberty to watch a movie each night. First we watched Aladdin in spanish dubbed with english subtitles. 

One of the middle aged guys, Ricardo, took deep interest in Aladdin despite it being a movie for kids. He nodded with interest towards the whole movie with a light gaze. All while having an device strapped to his ankle of course. I wasn't sure for what purpose that served but it sure gave me inspiration to track down Jason's activity from my anime series, Dragoma Inferno.

Then we watched Ice Age. To my raw surprise, Irine and few other adults watched the movie while the kids were absent. Then came Coco, where I, Maria, Sophia, Leandro and Irine were deeply engrossed into the movie. Having never seen the movie, and despite understanding 2%, it was a great movie nonethless. Cinderella, Robin Hood, and other Disney movies followed right after. All of them in thier Spanish dubs.

There was one movie that I watched solo in my dorm room, relaxed on the top bunk, with my Acer laptop beaming out Captain America Civil War at 9. Though there were few interruptions from two of our female roommates from Venezuela. Well, the daughter, Franyeli was a typical teenager with a huge ego. Her deep yet frail voice seemed as if she was comfortable with me being friends though it didn't last too long. While talking one night, the translator app brought up "Santa Maria" which caused her and her mother Lillina to tumble over in non stop laughter.

  

And that's when the biggest activity came for the kids. I generously let them play my Nintendo Switch. Well most of the kids were hyped to play, the adults just tagged along. Smash Bros, Mario Kart were most of the games that were enjoyed by many. The Switch mainly was an attraction for the kids as they always pestered me to set the console up and play for an hour or two. I and my brother challenged non kids meaning there were adults too.

Whelp that was my first day in the shelter! 

Part 2 is up next! 

Nowi276 out! :)