I had breakfast with one of my friends, then we walked up to the market together. Next I walked up to Cali’s school to pay her monthly bill. She appeared out of no where, hugs me enthusiastically, tells me she loves me, gives me a parting squeeze and says she has to get back to her friends before they miss her. It was a beautiful three seconds.
Went to a bunch of pharmacies with my friend looking for a certain medication. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s so different here. Here you don’t need a prescription for drugs, you just buy what you want. How different is that from our system? Makes pharmacists an even more significant since they are the ones offering the advice. It explains the self-diagnosis I’m constantly overhearing in the coffee shops. There will be friends talking to each other, discussing their physical maladies. One will say, “This hurts,” the other will respond, “Have you tried such-n-such a drug? I’ve heard that works on that.” The other person then trots off to the pharmacy. I guess if you don’t want to pay the 35Q for a doctor’s consultation, you can self-medicate indefinitely. This also explains why there is so much addiction with people who have money here. If you can afford drugs and are so inclined, there aren’t obstacles to addiction. At church on Sundays addressing addiction happens weekly.
Later in the morning I went to visit an older woman who is recovering from a broken hip. She is my mom’s age. My friend is overseeing her care as part of her work. The older woman has been a bit depressed lately. Not surprising since it has only been 18 days since she broke it and she is bedridden. My friend had her friend come in to talk to her about Jesus and read from the Bible. My friend thought this would lift her spirits and give her hope. But instead it just annoyed the woman. She said she doesn’t believe in that stuff and don’t let the door hit you in the butt (revised standard version). Then she went to sleep.
In the afternoon I picked Cali up from the family’s house. She showed me the five little chicks that are two weeks old. She gave me the great news that the family is going to let her take a chick back with us to Canada. The mom said she can pack it up in a box with holes, put a tortilla ball for it to eat on the flight (how did they know we were flying Spirit Airlines, pack us four of those balls so we all can eat), and the chicken could come and live in our house as her pet. Lovely. So yes, I got to break her eager little heart on the way home. It cost me an extra Twix bar and two suckers at PanaSuper.
I went to the singing group in the evening. Hadn’t been there ever since Paul’s visit. They were excited to see me. It’s no wonder since I have no idea who was singing soprano when I wasn’t there. Even though the songs aren’t complicated and there is no noted music to sing from (pet peeve), it was social, it was light-hearted, enjoyable, and mostly in tune.
After we sang, a bunch of us went to the hot tub. After a dozen invitations to go, I was finally able to do so. The hot tub is in the backyard of a woman’s house, but it’s huge. Her house is part of a hotel, which explains the size of the tub. It could fit 20 people. My friends tub-it regularly. I thought they had to heat the water with wood, but apparently the water comes from deep in the ground. I remember how the woman at our last house used to wash our clothes in hot water that simply came out of the hose, after she let it run for a while. So the hot tub is filled around noon, but the water needs seven to eight hours to cool to a reasonable temperature. Even when we got in at 8, the water was too hot for me to stay in for over 10 minutes at a time. I couldn’t believe that comes from the ground and had been cooling since noon. We were a mixed group of 8, a couple of college volunteers from Florida, my closer girlfriends, my friend’s husband, the choir director. Everyone was telling jokes, so we were laughing until it hurt. After about an hour an a half, we got out, changed, got some munchie stuff and went to my friend’s house to talk some more. Now I understand why they like going to the hot tub as much as they do.