The baker in La Cruz, who opened his business only two months before we arrived, complained that he had too much work and needed a helper. He bakes little rolls, baguettes and traditional Mexican pastries, which to my European tongue are not quite up to snuff, but other cruisers rave about them. So it was not really the pastries I was after when I offered him my help. I figured I could give a hand for a few hours in exchange for the opportunity to speak and learn some Spanish. At first he did not understand and kept asking me if I wanted to learn how to bake bread. I insisted that I already knew how bake bread, and that it was communication I needed to improve. (Duh!) He took me in. I spent three hours in the bakery the following day, feeling like an intern. It was not bad, but neither of us got all that much out of it. He had to repeat even simple directions to me several times before I reacted, and even though I have baked quite a bit in my life, this commercial scale was a different can of worms. While I found myself very inept, the baker's wife would step in occasionally to remind him to talk to me. At the end of my workday, which was 13 hours shorter than the baker's, I inadvertently agreed to come in the following morning. When I realized that I would have to get up early and report there at 9 am again, I felt resentful. It had been five months since I worked at a job, and it seemed foolish to want to fall into that rhythm here and now.