SPANISH and more

More progress on my Spanish genealogy meets me daily. I found a Spanish college student in northern Spain on Facebook (thanks for the suggestion, Rick P) but his slang makes it difficult to use translation.com (smile). I am listening to CNN in Spanish on the radio (not to much luck there but I catch "and, but and friend" sometimes... My daughter, Audrie, is sending me her Espanol college study workbook and textbook to go with several I already have. Maybe a Spanish class might be more helpful? I have a Spanish email account and can't figure out who to send emails to except my brother and cousin who both speak fluently and will not laugh at me....

Considerable frustration has followed my research for bango numbers. This is a number given to my Spanish ancestors when they worked on the sugar plantations in Hawaii. A friendly lady is helping me from the Kaua'i Historical Society. She tells me each time a worker moved from one plantation to another, they changed bango numbers (yipee) and it was before the time of social security numbers. Also, the numbers were anywhere from 2, 3 or 4 digits (2 = doctor, etc). So I am BELOW square one trying to find out which plantations my families worked on because bango-numbered disks had ever been heard or let alone saved in the family archives.

Setting aside just a bit of my frenetic family tree investigation for awhile as I wait for information to arrive in bits and pieces, I have spent the past week deeply entrenched in writing Manuela's Petals and I have already written 129 pages. It is an amazing journey for me and at the end of my writing day, I smile, wishing I could place the finished book in my grandmother's or my father's hands. Instead, their descendents will be part of it and that is exciting. Until then, more typing, more research and a trip to Spain lies ahead for me.

The village of my ancestors is Fuentesauco, Spain; 2010 population is less than 2000 people living in the tiny village. No hotels are listed on the internet, 107 miles northwest of Madrid. Excitement continues to mount. I'll sleep in the fields if I must (with my laptop of course).