My girls left for school, then my sister and I walked her daughter up to her school. We went for breakfast in order to plan our day. While I was waiting for Mia to join me, there was a man who joined a woman for breakfast at the table next to me. My best guess is that they were friends. He had just come from studying Spanish, and they were talking about learning the language. Within a couple of minutes they were having a huge yelling argument about present participles. A couple of minutes more, and he was swearing and cursing at her. She was telling him he had a bad attitude toward grammar, that he was making it more difficult than it needed to be, let the language flow. The more she talked about loving the language and letting it flow, the more he let the obscentities flow starting with “F’in participles.” It was a crazy breakfast conversation. I have no idea what the actual issues were at play there. Participles are clearly some life metaphor for those two.
Then my sister and I went to the doctor’s office. A friend of ours had two blood pressure cups that were registering two different numbers, we needed a sphygmomanometer (google it) to see which one was inaccurate. Yesterday when we came by the doctor’s office, they told us the doctor would be in at 10am, so that’s when we went. Turns out she wasn’t going to be in at all, but her husband, who is also a doctor was there. He let us borrow their blood pressure cuff and we figured out which one was working. That took us until noon. Everything takes time.
Then we went to sort clothes at The Porch. They were collecting clothes for a family, two sisters who have fifteen children. There was one man who was the father of all the kids, but he was extorting someone. The husband and two of his brothers were killed. One man was shot, the other two brothers were burned to death. So these two women, sisters are now left with 15 children to raise. One of the older boys had both of his hands cut off. It’s a horrible story. My friend went up with her husband to visit the family and their living conditions were horrible, the children were all in rags. We collected and packed three suitcases of clothes and a few small toys. It took a couple of hours to gather all the stuff, because we were trying to find specific sizes for each of the 15 kids.
Then I went to pick up Cali and Mia’s kid from the family’s house and took them home. We went to play with the dog Max and we also dropped off the bloodpressure machine. Mia talked to the guy who is going to be doing a bunch of the work around the house, while Cali played with the dog.
Kier and Madi met up with us at the dog Max’s house (yes, he is the main draw), because they happened to be walked by and saw Cali go into the gate. I walked home with Kier and Madi because I had to wait for the guys who are taking a tree out of the backyard. Within a few minutes they were there. They came in the back, looked at the tree and started hacking at it with a machete. Within 13 minutes (yes, I did actually time them because I was so impressed), the tree was down.
We had no water in the house for half of the day. Some people have been without water for a week because they are fixing pipes. But our water came back on in the evening. Kier quickly took a shower.
Madi and Kier went to play practice, for two hours. Two guys hacked the rest of the tree into pieces, pick axed the roots. Mia rushed up to the plant nursery and picked up a bunch of plants. Mia’s kid brushed against a freshly painted green pole and got paint in her hair. We had to use drinking water to wash it out. Then she started breaking out in bumps, but Mia gave her a Dramamine which is an antihistimine and stopped itching.
We went to Atlantis for the last supper, since Mia is leaving in the morning. We saw the teachers from the school, who have girls visiting from the U.S who are Kier’s and Madi’s age. They decided to get together after the meal. K and Madi went over to their house, at 10:30 I walked up to meet them.
Mia went to pick up the cushions, but they weren’t done again. They said maybe on Friday afternoon, no really.
I decided not to go to Antigua next week. We had an invitation for another family to go for a week, do a Spanish immersion experience. But Cali is already doing a Spanish immersion experience, Kier just came back from Honduras, and Madi wasn’t keen on missing school or play practice. So we are passing on that opportunity. Besides, we are feeling immersed a-plenty.
The women went to the hot tub and invited me again. But it was Mia’s last night, so another night. We went over to the neighbor to talk about the electricity bill, but he was in the shower.