Hardware store day! Everyone kept talking about this place and I kept assuming that it was named “E-Z.” It absolutely never occurred to me that it would be the English word “easy.” I made friends with the tree dudes at the paint counter. We picked out about 10 different paint sample colors to try in both the common room inside and the courtyard. All the colors go together and so we can try them all out in the different qualities of light. We still need to paint samples on the wall though. We tried to make into Los Piletones to do that after the hardware store, but there’s been a lot of tension in the last day or two, so it wasn’t safe to stay. The lady who had been President of the community a year ago had stolen and sabotaged a bunch of stuff from the community center. Well she just got re-elected somehow and decided to torch the bank that had been put in under the freeway overpass. This was a really special bank because it was the first one ever put in a villas. It was a pilot project because usually villas are deemed too unsafe, but the people in villas are at a serious disadvantage without bank accounts or a place to put their money. Without secure money storage, it’s difficult to save up a substantial amount of cash to improve their situation and move up and out of the squatter community. So we only spent enough time in Los Piletones to drop off our supplies and then we had to head back out. We got back to the hostel and had more time to work on our plans for everything.