My first Saturday night went well. We ended up watching Amores Perro, which translates to Love’s a bitch. It was in Spanish so the subtitles kept me awake the whole time, but it was a very interesting movie. It had about 3 different plots, and none of them really went together. The first plot had a lot to do with betting on dog fights, so I was convinced I was going to have nightmares. As we were walking back we turned around and there was a pack of 6 dogs. I think I mentioned in my first post, but there are stray dogs everywhere. At night they all come out and eat the trash and food laying on the ground from the market. I’m not scared of walking alone at night because of people, I’m more scared of the dogs.
Sunday was probably my favorite day so far. We had two practices in the morning in the gym, which were fun. After practice we played a 5 v 5 basketball game with some kids that were in the gym. Then the day got interesting…
Majo, one of the girls we coach, invited us to go on a hike with her and her brother. We went over to her house to meet her and her Mom was cooking lunch and invited us in. She was making meat tortillas, which is ground up beef with vegetables mixed in. You flatten the meet and put it in a pan with a bunch of oil and butter. Julie and I got to help her but ours didn’t work out as well as hers. While we were cooking, Majo went to the market and got fresh tortillas and orange juice for our meal. We all sat down in one of the rooms to eat with the family, and it was amazing! The tortillas here are so different than in America, and so much better. The family lives in a very, very small house with two bedrooms, and five people. It was so amazing to me that a family could be so happy living that way.
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| I found this ball that some of the little kids were playing with that we ran in to! |
Anyways, once we were done with lunch it was time to go on our hike to see beautiful scenery (and get lost and the woods). We walked from the office up through a lot of different areas, including a strange abandoned house and an agricultural school. We were being led by Majo’s cousin and his friends, so they knew all the cool places to stop. The agricultural school or whatever it was had a barn full of bunnies in cages, but I’m not really sure what they do with them. They also had a boar and this massive pig, which might be considered a boar. Once we were there we were about at the highest elevation we would be at on the hike so we went a little ways and entered the forest. It started out fine, and we came to the first mirador, or look out and it was beautiful. I posted some pictures on facebook and if I can figure out to put them on here I will. We kept going until we got to Mirador #2 and it was equally or more beautiful than the first. The boys acted like they knew where they were going so we followed them and ended up deep into the woods not knowing how to get out. We went through some crazy terrain and ended up by this waterfall, which was pretty dope but Steph slid down into Julie that had potential to be bad. After 3 and a half hours we made our way out, and got back to the office. It felt like it was midnight by the time we were back, we were so exhausted from the day.
Monday we have homework hour for the girls at 1:30 when they get out of school, but it was raining so only 3 girls showed up. Practice is supposed to be at 2:30 but the field closed because of the rain, so we just played games with the girls in the office. We gave them trashbags to cover themselves on their way home, because it was raining really hard. The two sisters had a pretty far walk too, so I felt bad. At 5 we got on the bus and headed down to Pana to chamusca (scrimmage). It was an excited adventure down the mountain, and the buses drive crazy. Once we got there we had to walk fast to get to the field because we were late. The field was about the size of a tennis court, fenced in and had a cover over the top. It was the perfect size to play 5 v 5, and so fast pace because the only time the play stops is when it hits the fence behind the goal. There were 3 teams, so once one team scored the losing team went off. I played for about an hour, and then I went in for a tackle with the goalie and landed on my ankle wrong. I have only rolled my ankle once and it wasn’t very bad, but this hurt worse than anything! I was lying on the ground and some guy was like trying to move my ankle and I was yelling at him, but I proceeded to get up and go on the side. Ava, being the nice person she is, went and got me ice to put on it. So I sat out the last 45 minutes or so then we had to walk back to catch a ride back to Solola, but first we stopped to get an empanada. We saw a bunch of guys we played with at the place so sat with them for a while, therefore we missed the bus. We had to take a pickup truck back up the mountain, and it was pouring down rain. They stuffed about 10 people in the back of a tiny, old truck and put a tarp over us. It was not the most fun ride with my ankle, but needless to say we made it.
I woke up yesterday morning and could barely walk, and my ankle was huge, but once I got going it was fine. We took a bus then had to walk 15 minutes to a families house in Santa Maria. It was very interesting to see how different the people in this village lived. They had a mud floor, most of them were barefoot, and cooked on a fire. The women made us soup with noodles (similar to ramen noodles) and then tortillas. One of the women, delivered a baby at noon yesterday, so we got to see a new born. She had the baby in the bed she was laying in when we saw her. You put the noodles in the tortillas, and eat it. Actually you put everything here in tortillas and eat it. For dinner, Luis’ family invited us over. His mother made us tostadas, one was with guacamole and the other was with meet and veggies. For desert she made plantains in this special chocolate sauce. Everything was delicious, the food here is really good. That’s about all I got for now, much love!
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