DAY 10 Saturday May 23:

Kate…

After a good night’s rest in Santa Rosa, we got up at went into El Transito with Veronica.  Doña Ele and Ronal had us over for breakfast.  After scarfing down our rice and beans, eggs, and tortillas, we got into Ronal’s truck and said bye to all the kids, only to find that they were ALL coming with us!  YAY!!!  The trip included Beth and I, the Pastor and his son, Ronal and his 3 kids, Ronal’s brother, and Belkis, who is a teacher for the youngest kids at the school we taught at and an active member in the church.

Beth and I sat in the front as Ronal drove and everyone else hopped in the bed of the truck.  After about an hour and a half or so, we finally arrived in Leon.  We drove down a couple of busy streets that had all types of products being sold and people were EVERYWHERE!  Immediately Beth said that she loved the atmosphere and wanted to get out!  Our first stop was: the oldest church in Central America.  We got out and started walking towards the church.  As we crossed the street, one child each grabbed our hands.  It was too cute.  When we got inside the church, Beth kindly informed me of the sweat that was covering the entire back of my dress.  Awesome.  That’s what you get for sitting in the middle of a truck with no AC and very little air reaching you from the windows.  But don’t worry, I made her sit in the middle on the way back ;)

After seeing the church, we went to the ZOO!  Beth and I were not sure what to expect from this.  And we were definitely not blown away by it.  There was a total of probably 20 animals or so.  A few monkeys, a couple of raccoons, a couple of deer, a duck or two, some chickens, an alligator, 3 turtles, and last but not least, a not so cute anteater/pig looking thing.  We both thought of any zoo in the US and how this zoo was a joke in comparison.  But, the coolest things were the white-faced monkeys.  About three of them would come right up to the fence to look at us.  When I turned my camera on, it’s like they knew I was going to take a picture, so they started posing!  It was great!  Then, the stuck their hands out so that we could touch them.  The four little rascals had no problems grabbing their hands and smiling for the camera.  Beth and I on the other hand were a little more skeptical and talked about possibly using hand sanitizer after we touched them.  In the end, we decided it wasn’t the best decision and moved on.  About 10 minutes later when we left the zoo, the kids grabbed our hands again.  DINGGGG (lightbulb goes off).  The kids were touching the monkeys.  They did not wash their hands.  Therefore, we touched the monkeys without really getting to touch them!  BOO AND LAME!

After the zoo, we went to a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant.  The options were: fried chicken, chicken breast, or something else that chicken that we had never heard of.  We chose fried chicken, one because it was cooked the most, and two, let’s be honest with ourselves here, we like fried chicken!  When it came, it was possibly the smallest chicken wing I had ever seen.  It also came with white rice, some noodle things, and some vegetables.  Beth told me it probably wasn’t a good idea to eat the vegetables (YES!) and I didn’t really like the noodle things, so after I finished the chicken in 2 minutes, I tried to finish some of my rice.  I then ordered an orange fanta.  Very healthy?  You know the answer to that…

After lunch, we told the Pastor we wanted to do a little bit of shopping for small gifts.  He took us to a store that was like a party store/convenient store/the lady followed us around the ENTIRE store.  Did she think we were going to steal something?  I told Beth, if I had  any interest in stealing from the store, which I didn’t, I would probably steal some shampoo.  Then we told them we were going to just walk around the street we were on for a little bit and walked into a few clothing stores.  We saw a couple of cute things here and there, but for their prices, we decided we could probably buy the similar thing in the States.  We did not find any souvenir shops.  Boo L

After that, we went to the supermarket, for what reason I don’t know…  I guess maybe the Pastor thought we might find something there?  Haha  We ended up walking down the candy isle (hmmm I wonder who led the way…)  and I saw hersehy’s chocolate and immediately thought of SMORES!  Yes, my head was dreaming of chocolate deliciousness.  I asked the Pastor if they had ever had smores and he said no, so we bought the chocolate, marshmallows, and graham crackers.  Great success!

After that, we all piled into the truck and head home.  This time I was by the window and wasn’t covered in sweat.  Well maybe just a little.  I forgot to say that after Beth told me I was covered in sweat, I quickly decided it was my defense mechanism against all men who dared to smile or whistle at me.  Perfect.  Beth was wearing a backpack.  SUCKSSSS.  No sweat defense mechanism for her!!!

I fell asleep on the way home and by the time I woke up, we were back!  The kids came over right away and we just hung out for awhile.  We then told them we were going to cook a little dinner and that they should go home.  They didn’t.  So we made omelets and when I say ‘we’ I mean Beth.  All I did was chop up some ingredients.  After we finished eating, it looked like, and sounded like, a storm was coming.  We didn’t know what to do.  By the time we decided we wanted to go to Santa Rosa, it was raining.  We didn’t know who to ask to take us to Santa Rosa.  We decided to run across the street with all of our stuff and ask Ronal to take us.  His wife kindly agreed to take us and we were on our way.

Let me just describe the run over there.  First of all, I was wearing a skirt and my Nike tennis shoes.  A definite no-no.  Also, I had a flashlight on my head.  You know, the ones that construction workers use.  Lastly, Beth and I were screaming the whole run over to Ronal’s house.  Finally, we arrived.  Hallelujah.

Overall, it was an educational, shopping-filled and monkey day with a little splash of God’s sense of humor.