November 15, 2007 - Unfinished

I meant to finish this one a little later because I was too tired when I wrote it, but unfortunately I didn't ever get around to it, so it kind of stops in the middle of nowhere I'm afraid.


Today was a day filled with adventures by all, mainly occuring during the outreach part of the day.

This morning I woke up feeling rather ill in my stomach from the water (I assume) I have been drinking. Several others have been experiencing this condition as well which is unfortunate but hopefully it will pass quickly. So due to my ailment, after breakfast I returned to my bed and slept for a while longer, and then Marta came in to visit me to see how I was doing and suggested that I rest for the rest of the morning, since it was a fairly slow day and there was not much for us to do. So that is precisely what I did until a little while before lunch where upon I got up to make myself useful and see what the others were doing. After lunch we had classes with Jose on intercultural mission, and then we went for outreach where the adventures began.
We were supposed to go to this man's house whom we met the previous day, who spoke English and had been with the Merchant Marines for many years and had lived in the States for a long time also. I thought him to be a little bit of a sketchy character upon meeting him – when we talked to him it was Monica, Johannes and I. First a short word about Monica – She is an elementary teacher from Lithuania. She dresses mostly in black. She has died red hair, always messy and has a particular unkempt look about her. She doesn't know very much English. She is very...vocal about her opinion, and I hate to say it, but I find it very difficult to like her, but perhaps I am merely misunderstanding her. In any case I am trying. So we were all standing there talking to this guy, and he was talking about his house and how it was nice and we were welcome to come there any time we liked, (specifically directing the comment towards Monica and I) and I was just trying to be nice and said thank you and it was very kind of him to offer, etc. So he was like yeah you guys should come back tomorrow, and proceeded to go on about how his place was all nice and private and secluded...this is the point where I really started to find him sketchy.

So, tomorrow, being today, that is what we set out to do. We met up with another guy we came to meet the other day who also speaks English, and he offered to show us to his house. This was most kind of him, since we didn't know the way and would not be able to find it otherwise. When we arrived there we discovered that he was not at home, but his garden keeper guy came out and talked to us for a little bit. (This guys place is HUGE comparatively speaking. He has about 30 mandarin trees [and possible other kinds as well] out front, and beautiful flowers and stuff all around.) Anyway the garden keeper informed us that he was out playing cards some distance away and probably wouldn't be back until later, so we decided to carry on, along with our other friend whose name is Luis. We were going around meeting people and telling them of the childrens program we are having on Sunday, and so we just continued on with this, deciding to come back to this guy's house a little later to see if he was there. The first place we stopped at was where one girl was going through the process of making coffee, which we observed for a few minutes, to see how it was done. (We are in a coffee growing area – up on a yonder hill is where they have a huge plantation I guess you'd call it, where they grow alot of coffee..)