tuesday afternoon

Tuesday was quite a busy day. After seeing the kids at the school and watching Ronal get bandaged up, I went with Odilcia to buy chicken for lunch. (The kids receive breakfast and lunch at school). There is a little colmado (convenient store-ish) down the street from the school where we went. Odilcia bought the ingredients needed to cook lunch. The woman there was cutting up whole chickens (including cutting off the toenails on the claws of the chickens) and weighing them for us.


We went back to the school and she began cleaning and preparing the chicken to cook. I decided to leave the school and walk over to Pancho Mateo. You can either go the long way and cross the bridge or right by the school is a place where you can cross the river on foot. (Taking a moto is always an option as well, but who wants to pay for that?!) I opted for the quick route. Below is the scenic view as I approached the rio.


As you can see, it is the designated place to dump your trash. Awesome. Fortunately it hadn't rained in a few days, so it wasn't really that muddy getting to the river and it was shallow enough to cross without getting my shorts wet.

I took a book with me to Pancho and read to Elsa and Marta and a handful of other kids that were in the area. I spent some time with Sili and he walked with me back to where I crossed the river. I tried to get a picture, but my camera wouldn't turn on. (Maybe the quick fix of some air and tape didn't cut it...)

Back at the school, I met up with Odilcia to travel back to Los Algodones where she lives. I wanted to see her boys, but also see a family from Chichigua that moved there. It took forever to get there on the moto, and the gravel road we took to get there was horrible. My legs were sorer after that ride than they were when I was on the horse.

When I got there I spent some time with Odilcia and more time with Miquet, Rosland, Alfredo, and Eduardo. They are all doing well and have grown up so much. Most people living there are Haitian so they spoke more Creole than Spanish. I didn't take a picture while I was there, but below is a picture of the family from a couple of years back.

Wow, looking at that picture I can really see how much they have grown! I found out that Miquet's husband died last October; I'm not sure if that is why they moved or not.

I went back and sat with Odilcia for a bit. Sitting on her porch looking at the other identical houses in a row which led to the backdrop of beautiful, lush green mountains glistening in the sun- I don't think a painting could have been more beautiful. It was probably the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen in this country. I took my camera out to try and capture it, but it still wouldn't turn on. Dang it.

After saying my goodbyes and making the long trek back on the moto, I got my stuff together to head back to Santiago that night because in the morning we were headed to the capital!