Bats and Hitchhiking

I'm beginning to love the rain here. It's rainy season until November or so and the pattern seems to be a little rain after lunch, a lot of rain around 4, and often rain at night. The rain isn't annoying and violent like it sometimes is back home; it's just background noise here.
(photo: view from balcony upstairs during an afternoon rain)
The weekend has been very relaxing. Slept in Saturday...recovering from the birthday celebrations. Yuan taught Maria how to cook fried rice- and I attempted to help, but mostly got in the way...shocker. The weekend of cooking continued- lasagna made by Alex last night and Janelle made a chicken dish tonight. The day ended with Friday Night Lights, of course. There's talk of a movie marathon sometime this week...it's an exciting life we live down here at night.
Saturday night was hysterical thanks to Ashley. Bats fly around at night, so we keep doors closed to prevent them from coming into our rooms. Ashley and I were on our way upstairs when she commented to me that we need to be sure to close our door- and right as she said that a bat flew out of our room and she let out an ear piercing scream. I shrieked and then burst into laughter. It was the funniest thing I think I've ever witnessed. Ben, Dr. Ruben, and Alex all came down to see if we were ok but I was laughing too hard to respond. The bat is now a running joke around here- good times.

Sunday is the day we all make our own meals- so breakfast is kind of whenever and we all lounge around. This place is definitely feeling like home now. Conversations over breakfast are less formal and more playful. I worked on secondaries after breakfast, but then decided it was time to visit Magdalena, the next town over. So Yuan and I set off walking to take in the sights that we can't see when we run because running requires looking down to avoid twisting an ankle or tripping over the rocks and holes. If I haven't said it enough already, the sights here are so beautiful. The walk probably took about 40 minutes and it brought us right into the center of town. Magdalena is definitely more developed than Santa Lucia- better roads and tiled floors in several of the houses. On Sunday there is a big market in Magdalena, and we arrived as it was ending. We went into the farmacia/tienda to get me a phone and after a nice conversation with the store owner, we found out his sister is the doctor at the health center there, Cesamo Magdalena. After exploring some more we came across a legit soccer game going on in the campo. There were jerseys, food vendors (delicious looking pupusas), and a vuvuzela! It was such a cool thing to witness- and they are really common around here so I'm excited to go to more. We finally decided to head back, took a different way and felt that we were slightly being followed, but ended up being fine. Right as we were discussing how we think we'd be fine to hitchhike, a truck pulls up and we hear "vamos?!" After making sure it was ok- checking for women in the back- we asked where they were going (Santa Lucia! was the response) and hopped in the back. It's funny, before I left charlie was telling me the best way to sit in the back of a truck- advice at which I laughed and said I doubted I would ever use. Chuck- you were right. Hitchhiking is super common around here. We hopped out in front of the health clinic and joined everyone for Sunday leftover lunch inside. I spent the rest of the day working on secondaries on the upstairs porch. The view from there is so incredible and the hammock that is up there completely swallows you. I could sit there for hours just looking at the mountains.

I finally decided to enter my data into the Shoulder to Shoulder database- Alan came down to help me and we found out that those doing the project before me did not enter the data correctly into the system, so now I have to go back and fix them-- difficult, no, but time consuming. No worries though- as I keep saying over every meal "Life is good".
Miss everyone a ton and would love to hear from you all :)

adiosss