Road Trip

Friday morning Ruthie, Martha, Uncle Ixen(one of the men who works for Bill and Lori at the house) two other men, and myself drove the ambulance up to the top of a mountain in Dalou Pass. We leave the house around 10:00 and head to town to get some snacks for the day. Along the way we pick up about 10 more people and drive them to town. This happens anytime we take a vehicle out because everyone from the village walks to town which is about 2 miles away. Soda here is a big treat to everyone, so the men get some coke and pineapple flavored fanta, along with some crackers and passion fruit(my favorite! it's a circular fruit that you break open and inside there is a gooey substance mixed with seeds that you eat...the kids here call them "snot rocks" so you get the picture). The crackers, chips, and well everything else here is much less flavorful than the packaged food we're accustomed to eating, it is also ALWAYS stale, so harder and drier as well. We leave town and drive for about 30 minutes to the bottom of the moutain, there is a village here that Ruthie's boyfriend, Terri, lives in. He and a friend of his, follow behind in Terri's truck. We make a couple stops along the way, the view getting more and more amazing the higher we climb. Once we reach the top and have looked around Ruthie, Martha, and I jump into the bed of Terri's truck for the trip down(the view out of the ambulance window wasn't the greatest). Ah this is the life. I have the perfect view and it's nice and cool the whole trip down(the ambulance was pretty stuffy). Everyone waves as we pass and when we get back to the bottom, Terri decides to show me around his village. So the ambulance follows and we stop at the stream where they wash and do their laundry...much prettier than the one we have! After that we head to a huge river where a ton of kids and adults are playing and swimming. There is a part of the river where the current is really strong and everyone was jumping in there and letting the river take them down. Somehow I ended up getting in and we went down a few times. The huge skirt I was wearing made it near impossible to get out of the river, and being shoeless didn't help. My feet are sore at this point from going without shoes lately that I can barely walk across the rocks back to the truck. We then head back home and play some soccer for the rest of the day and I get to bed early because I'm absolutely exhausted!
This morning(Saturday)Lori took Ruthie, Martha, all of the kids, and me into town to do some shopping. I can honestly say it was the most stressful shopping experience I've ever had. There are plenty of stores in town but they're all very small and, well, dumpy to put it simply. We did a little browsing inside some shops and then went out to the main strtch of town where a ton of men and women sit outside displaying the different things they've made and have for sale. The main thing they sell are belims, which are colorful purse like bags that all women and even men carry. Bill and Lori gave me one when I came but I was in search of another. The stretch of belims is probably a coupld hundred yards long with thousand of belims hung up on a the fence neighboring the sidewalk. I'm used to people staring at me anytime I'm in town but I'm not used to them flocking to me trying to sell me things! I was just trying to look at all of the different belims and all of the women selling them were jumping up pointing to their different bags giving me the prices. This was just overwhelming and stressful for me because I couldn't understand a word of what anyone was saying and I didn't even want to stop and look at the ones that I was interested in. I ended up finding one I liked and then I headed down further into town to the other things for sale. This was what I was looking forward to. There was a ton of jewelry, hand woven plates and baskets, paintings and a ton of other things all unique and different(familia tell me what you want christmas is coming up!). I bought a few things here and realized I am not cut out for this trpe of shopping. You can barter prices with the people selling their things but these poor old men looked so pitiful I couldn't bring myself to try to give them any less than what they asked me. I wanted to buy from all of them because I felt so bad for them. I decided I would come back another time to finish up my shopping because there were too many cool things there.