Impressions

So much has happened this week, so much to praise God about! Here are a few impressions of life here:

Our host family is loving and gracious, they have a lovely home and garden and are patient teachers…we are not only learning Spanish, but are also getting a crash course in cooking Mexican cuisine! Carmen is a great cook and I’m helping with each meal, most made completely from scratch. They did buy BBQ chicken on Sunday afternoon, but otherwise, we cook. All Ralph can say is YUM, YUM, YUM.

One morning this week I was helping Carmen clean the patio and she got busy talking with a neighbor so I finished spraying it down and turned off the hose. From the house I can hear Ralph yelling, I had turned off the water to the house, not just the hose, and he was all soaped up in the shower when the water quit…oooops! Lesson learned… Also, the water is whatever temperature God makes it, so it makes showering later in the day preferable, but with six of us showering you take what you get!

Laundry for six is interesting too, seems there’s always a load going in the washer, which is on a tiny side patio, and the wet clothes also hang there to dry, but again, with six of us we run out of line so are using the fence today!

Carmen sent Ralph down the block and over a block to fetch hot fresh tortillas from the neighborhood tortillaria, a huge stack, plenty for all of us for just 6 pesos! Still, I made gorditas from scratch today with Carmen’s help, and she still likes to cook and use fresh homemade things rather than store bought.

Ralph has been thrilled to find Coke in 1 liter glass bottles, a thing of the past in Washington, but common here, and only three pesos!! About 30 cents. He has one each evening from the little store across the street. We also are surprised by the number of American brand names that are here, Coke, Pepsi, Mr. Clean, Kraft to name a few. Each visit to the store reveals more.

We are thankful we don’t have to drive much, traffic is very heavy and very crazy. Hard to put into words…cars, trucks, motorcycles, taxis, buses, bicycles, pedestrians and vendors all in the street all at once, all vying for space to travel, all at crazy speed! It’s just flat scary. So we stick pretty close to home so far.

There’s an amazing array of butterflies and hummingbirds that visit the garden and a big contingent of cats that belong to the neighbors, and one little neighbor dog named Willie that has adopted Ralph! There’s a little two year old boy who is at the little store across the street and he’s cute as can be, but a pill too, he really keeps his family hopping. There people visiting all the time, lots of opportunities to practice our Spanish. The kids all adore Ralph of course, and while Carmen and Genaro and most of their family call us Ralph and Chris, we have become Raphael and Cristina to the rest of the neighborhood. Genaro Jr. is taking an English course, and we have become his live in lab! He’s 14, 15 next month.

We visited all day yesterday with our friends Pat and Arlie who are vacationing here. Shopping in the Golden Zone (all dollars, too spendy) and lunch in their beach front palapa!! Enjoying the beach and the breeze in the lovely shade! It was wonderful. I took my camera along to take pictures of them and the beach, but sadly, I left the camera in the cab!!! It didn’t get turned into the lost and found or to the hotel either, so it was lost.

On the way home we were talking with another taxi driver about it and he said he’d take us to the HQ of the taxi that we’d use and see what could be done. Pretty much nothing, it was not reported, but the guy gave Ralph his card and said to call today. Since all that communication is still pretty hard for us, we asked Darwin to call. He tried to let me down easy saying that there was no chance to get it back, it just doesn’t happen, and he didn’t want to get my hopes up too much by making the call. I told him I understood, but still wanted him to call…he called back shortly and said it was a miracle…my camera was at the cab office, I just needed to come by and pick it up! Praise the Lord…all the pictures we’ve taken in the last week are safe and sound!!!

WE SERVE AN AWESOME GOD!!!