So the torrential downpourage has greatly declined. It doesn't rain as hard, as often, or as loud. Monday night, though, it was raining before church. When I was sitting behind Mom, little Selena came up and sat beside her. Her hair was dripping... she was soaked and shivering, but she still walked to church. She was shaking after a while, and I loaned her my sweatshirt to wrap up in. After church, Mom asked her if she had a jacket at home at all, and she said no. We decided that we were going to change that, so Tuesday morning we went shopping and bought an adorable, warm, black coat for her. And that afternoon, we went to her house to give it to her. Their house was four metal walls and a tin roof, with one lightbulb in the middle that was all the electricity there was. When we gave her the bag, she smiled soooo big, it was adorable! Then it was Jose's turn to talk to her mom for a little while. He asked about whether Selena was liking her school and stuff, and Selena was so excited to tell him all about how great it was. She even showed me all of her school books, and "taught me how to read", which I thought was pretty adorable. And once Jose, Mom, and Selena's mother got onto more boring subjects, Selena wanted to show me their dogs. They live in an area with a couple other families and there were several dogs roaming around. One of them was making a lot of noise out in this little shack, so we went to check on it first. She took my hand and dragged me all around showing me the animals, and telling me how there was one that was all white, and she really wanted to find it to show me, but she didn't know where it was. So she showed me her favorite, or at least it was my favorite. This litlle puppy was not very old at all, and it was so tiny! It's name was Canella, which is Spanish for cinnamon. Pretty cute. :D
Dad went back to Nueva Concepcion today to check up with the doctor for his leg, and he says he's happy with how it's going, as long as Dad keeps up with the medicine and keeping his leg elevated. When he came back, he brought an *amazing* surprise for dinner... legitmate, non goat-cheesy, with real pepporoni and crust, PIZZA. We were thrilled.
On the not so thrilling side, we're without running water tonight, again. They have been working on the tank for a couple days now, and seeing what the inside made me cringe to realize what we have been showering in. But while it has been being fixed, we haven't been able to use any water. It was back for a while this afternoon, just for a little while, and then it stopped again. They said that he should have the filter thing tomorrow so that we can have water again, and hopefully without gobs of dirt in it. I'm hoping all of the power outages are lessening, too. Tuesday night we had Teresa, Jose, and Marlon over for some English praise songs because we had been misisng it. The power flickered a couple times, and then went out. Which was totally ok, during that. It was actually a kind of cool effect. But once the service was over, we wanted the electricity back... But, with nothing else to do, we lit a couple candles and started playing a card game. It was about halfway through the game that we heard the electric water tank thing (don't you love my technical terms?) outside start sputtering and kick on. We almost didn't even notice. Till someone pointed out that it takes electricity for that to work. We reached over and flicked the lights, and they came on. Who knows how long we had had access to power and not used it? But we had a good time with the game anyway, and I'm pretty sure Nathan beat all of us. It's been a long couple days, and we're all pretty exaughsted. Everyone else has already headed back to their rooms right now, actually. I guess it would probably be a good idea for me to do the same. All my friends back home who started school this week, hope it's going alright :)
More to be posted soon!
su amiga,
Ruth Erin