Again Nathan worked at the daycare painting all day. The kids and I cut, painted, played playdough, used chalk, and made an apple pie..anything I could think of to have a busy productive day instead of a naughty productive day with the kids.
Today Nathan worked at the daycare all day finishing up the last of the painting. He took Lydia with him and then the boys and I walked there shortly after. I took pics of his progress and we played outside on the playground area for awhile. This afternoon the kids and I went to Chito and Mary's house to play and drink mate. We also played at the playground that is close to their house.
1/21/15 Day 70 Happy 2nd birthday Liam
Today Nathan stayed home so we could celebrate Liam's birthday together. He fixed the washing machine this morning and this afternoon we went to Chito and Mary's house to celebrate Liam's birthday. Mary made Liam a cake and we also played at the playground again.
We woke up this morning to a down pour of rain. It hasn't rained this much since we've been here. It rained almost all morning and we had buckets and buckets of rain water pouring into our living room thru the light fixture. We moved everything out of the living room and once the rain slowed down we cleaned the floors and squeeged the water out the door. I can't believe how much rain we got this morning and how poorly our roof withstood the rain. Nathan didn't go to work today because of all the rain and thunder and lightning made it pretty hazardous on the roads. We all took a nap this afternoon and when we woke up it was hot and humid which doesn't happen often here because it's usually dry and hot with very little rain if any most of the time. This evening about 7:00pm we were going to walk to Johnny Sieber's (Juan's sons) apartment and it started to down pour rain again. It soaked the inside of our house again but we didn't have the buckets and buckets of water to clean up again. After the rain stopped there was a double rainbow in the sky. A beautiful reminder of God's promise after having so much rain today. It stopped raining about 8pm so we then walked to Johnny's apartment and ate supper with him and talked until about midnight. 1/23/15 Day 72
It is hot and humid today from all of the rain we got yesterday. Nathan worked this morning at the daycare and the kids and I visited with Frieda for awhile. This evening after naptime we all played at the park for a long time and then we had supper out. It was a very enjoyable time together.
1/24/15 Day 73
Nathan got up early this morning and finished up the last of the painting on the outside of the daycare/church building. The rest of the day was a lazy saturday playing and having a good time together as a family.
1/25/15 Day 74
This morning we walked to the river to play and swim and have a picnic lunch. This evening all of the church zones met in the South zone church building for a church service at 7pm. We walked there and had a church service and then talked with people afterward and Susanna gave us a ride home then.
EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT HERE!
From the way people live live to taking care of everyday necessities.....everything is different. I want to TRY to describe briefly here some differences so I don't forget. Once you live in a place for awhile the differences are not so evident.......they become NORMAL, but none the less they are very different than what we are used to.
There is quite a bit of trash littering the streets. People do try to care of their property but the kind of cleanliness that is in the States is just not here. There are also many stray dogs here.....stray dogs means dog poop everywhere. There aren't as many stray dogs here as there were last time we were here, but still enough stray dogs that our children notice the difference. The streets here in Choele Choel don't have stop signs. Where the streets intersect and there is no stop light the first vehicle to the intersection goes first. If 2 cars come to an intersection at the same time, the car on the right has the right of way. When driving in a car this makes me nervous as I'm not used to this kind of driving. For the price of gas and the amount of $$ that people make......gas is relatively expensive. This is in part why many people have mopeds or motorcycles or small vehicles. All cars are 5 speeds. Most cars have seatbelts (at least in the front) but most people do not use seatbelts and since most cars are very small it really isn't feasible for carseats either. It's not a law for kid carseats like it is in the States. It is not uncommon for whole families to be riding on a motorcycle together. Food is pretty expensive here and someone told me recently that about 80 percent of a families income goes to buying food. That sounds incredibly high to me but that's what I was told. The Argentine work day is from about 8am-1pm and then most people go home to eat their big meal with their family for lunch about 2pm, then some people go back to work from 5pm-9pm or so and most Argentine families eat supper between 9-11pm. The food is different here too. Many Argentine families eat lots of bread, meat and yerba mate, along with cookies and cakes and such. There is not as much of varieties of foods as we are used to eating in the States. The keys that open doors are different than we are used to. Also there is 240 volts electricity instead of the 110 that we are used to in the U.S. along with a different kind of wall plug in. The ketchup and mustard and mayonase come in plastic packaging as well as the milk. You can't buy a gallon of milk here. It comes in plastic liter bags. Since it is so hot all of the time with very little rain there are also water sprinklers that water the public grass at varying intervals throughout the day. So many differences but many of them feel more normal the more time we spend here.
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