What happened to Saturday?

Saturday, 4-9-11

I only vaguely remember what I did today. That’s how interesting my day was. I know I did something in the morning but I’m not sure what it was. I think today was another one of those days that was supposed to be more productive than it actually was. Those seem to be happening a lot lately. I don’t know it’s that’s a bad thing because it means I’m not getting things done or if it’s a good thing because it means I’m not stressing about every little detail.

I got some laundry done which was good. It seems like I do laundry a lot but I actually don’t do as much as the ladies here. They wash their own clothes plus the school uniforms of Mauricio, Elmer, and Marvin and Alejandro’s clothes as well since he lives here during the week. Most days someone is washing clothes or sheets or towels. Not only is there a lot of stuff that needs to be washed but because of the weather and living conditions many clothes need to be washed more often.

For example, Marvin, Elmer, and Mauricio each only have one pair of pants and a shirt for their school uniform. They all live together in Alejandría (a caserío) and walk to school every day together. They always wear “normal” clothes to walk to the Pastoral House and then change once they get here into their uniforms. It’s a dusty walk from Alejandría to Berlín in the dry season so they get dirty fast. In the rainy season they also walk which means mud.

After doing laundry I washed out Chiquita’s cage and Chelita’s guacal (plastic tub) that she sleeps in at night. Chiquita is the conure and Chelita is the chicken. Chiquita’s cage wasn’t too bad but Chelita’s guacal was very funky. I put newspaper in the bottom of both of their little enclosures and change it daily. But they are both sloppy eaters. Chiquita likes to dump out her water as soon as I put it in her cage and Chelita dumps out her food as soon as I put it down for her. Oh, my daughters. I love them very much.

Before I knew it day had turned into night. I got on Skype to talk to my mom about Spanish. She’s been taking Spanish classes and we were practicing and reviewing some words. She’s doing really well considering she’s only had a couple classes. And she’s retaining the information as well which is key. She said something about learning how to say “sit down” in Spanish and that got me thinking about the imperative verb tense which we don’t have in English. So after we were finished talking I started looking things up on the internet and checking my notes on the computer about the imperative tense. Sometimes I get going on these little adventures inside the Spanish language that after a while I get lost inside my own head.

I had wanted to get to bed early. Yeah, that didn’t happen. I ended up sitting in bed watching an episode of The Office that I brought with me and painting my toenails pink. So glad I stayed up to get these important things done.