Feb 11: When it Rains, it Pours

When it rains, it pours. And I mean the literally and figuratively. For the past 5 days it has been pouring here. Not your typical tropical downpour between patches of sun, but non stop rain. If you’ve followed the news you’ve probably heard of a number of mudslides. Although some have been in the same province as us, our location is doing fine. There is a warning out for the city of La Vega due to the river flowing through it, but we are far from it and protected by hills on three sides. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t had some problems.

Our Host Family

Earlier this week the waterline to the Barrio was damaged so we have had no water for a few days. Although we keep a rain barrel full, for just such occasions, it means no washing cloths and only flushing the toilet a couple times per day. As you can imagine this leaves the bathroom with a rather unpleasant odor. We’re not sure when they will be able to repair the pipe because we’ve heard that the road has to be dry before they will attempt any fix. At the same time our Internet has been up and down which affects both our blog updates, and phone service. At the same time our house has been showing some of its lack of being water proof. Although our soap patches are holding out fine, some of our rafters appear to be water logged and are starting to drip down our walls. We’ve tried to move things out of the way, but don’t have a lot of space to work with. Finally I should mention we have had a rather nasty cold go through our family which has meant lots of coughing, bad nights, and rough mornings.  The kids seem to be just about through which means it’s our turn now.

Overall our spirits are holding up fine. For one, we realize our time is quickly coming to a close. But as well, we have been eating lunch and dinner with a Dominican family. This has been a lot of fun, exposed us to some delicious new foods, and given us lots more Spanish practice (although in this case the husband speaks reasonably good English). Our favorite food so far has probably been the fried eggplant, if you can believe it. It’s hard to describe the taste but it included a lot of oil, salsa and was fried; do I really need to say more?

Ariana Quote of the Day: Look at that clock! [Dad] Your watch isn’t that fast!

Ciara Quotes:

• When I grow up I want to be a creature
• When I’m an adult God’s going to make me into a tiger
• When I go to Gizmo’s house [Grandma's dog], I’m going to stay with Grandma

Go Fly A Kite. It really is as high as it looks.

The "Widowmaker". Used by some (not us) to get a warm shower. It gets the name from the rather unusual combination of electricity and water, no GFCI here.