Yesterday was quite a crazy day. I will start with the most eventful moment of the day for me. The water here comes in big 3 liter bottles (like soda bottles) and one of these bottles was sitting on the kitchen table. Katty being the sweet 13 yr old sister that she is saw that I did not have anything to drink and got me a glass and poured the water up to the brim. I was feeling rather thirsty and took a big refreshing gulp only to find that what I had drank was NOT water. I would say that the fire in my stomach and throught and immediate headache was gave it away. First I thought it was vodka but I quickly realized it couldn’t be because vodka, though it burns, is NOT even close to this painful. I thought I was going to breath fire and that this liquid would burn a hole right through my stomach. Rosie realizing what happened quickly explained that I needed to drink a lot of water because I had just consumed rubbing alcohol which she had used to clean the crystal for the party the other day. She felt horrible and kept apologizing. I felt bad that she felt bad because it wasn’t her fault and she was quite upset about it all. I thought I was going to die for about an hour but eventually the burning stopped, I didn’t quite feel so nauseous and the headache dissipated. Its quite funny now that I think back on it.
After I had a nice glass of rubbing alcohol I went to help with a “minga” which is a Spanish word that describes when a community comes together to help with something. Sonya’s, one of the girls here, family’s cows are dying because of the drought in a certain area so we all got in a car and drove to harvest some greens for the cows. I got to use a sickle which was fun. the motherly instincts in me were rather concerned about the fact that there were 8 year olds that were also using sickles (which are giant and very sharp blades) but safety in that way is not much of a concern here and the 8 year olds looked more skilled than I was in using the instrument.
After some hard work we all went to the river to play for a little. The kids climbed some guava trees and we all had some of the yummy fruit. It was about 60 degrees out and I was quite cold but the kids were a bit crazy and went swimming in the river with paul. Eddy, sue and I had more sense and played with the few kids that were intelligent enough to stay on the bank.
We then went for a walk along these very tall, steep clifs and the walkway was about 3 feet wide. Again the motherly instincts felt a bit nervous and I made Natalie walk infront of me so I could watch her. But the walk was amazing… it wound around the mountains and went through caves. They showed me different plants that you can use to cook with, make tee, make herbal remedies. Its amazing how much they know about the land. Sonyas mom was with us and found a cotton plant. She showed us how to wind the cotton into thread. It was a perfect little afternoon.
I got home and had coffee and bread with my family like I do every evening and spent some time reading. I have really enjoyed meal times with my family here. Every morning I wake up to two hardboiled eggs, a cup of coffee, a piece of fruit, a piece of bread and my “mom” sitting at the table waiting to talk with me and ask me how I slept. Then at lunch the kids are home from school and carlos comes home for his lunch break at work and we all eat together. In the evenings we all sit and have bread and coffee since they don’t eat dinner here and since im used to dinner sometimes rosie cooks something little for me. Its so nice to have three meals with my little family here. Its not something that happens often in America. Life is too fast paced. Hands down my favorite part of being here so far has been being apart of this family. They are so loving and its so fun to be with them all of the time! I feel so blessed.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment