Houses along Lake Yarinacocha
Catching a quick nap on the boat
Shipibo Conibo village
Feliz Felix
Huge Moth OUTSIDE our house (thank goodness). It was half the size of my hand.
Ruby - as dirty as I wanna be!
New volleyball action in our yard
We had an interesting and fun weekend. We started off by meeting some indigenous folks that David works with. They live 7 days by river from Pucallpa and David says their community is very marginalized and one of the principal ones he would like to help. As I stood there somewhat in shock, I knew these were people that worked harder in one day than I had probably worked in my life. Heck, I don't even know if I could have handled the boat trip to get there! And I thought of the huge box of baby clothes I was about to send to a friend when these people's children probably only had the one (very ill-fitting) one they were wearing. A lot of strange feelings of privilege, poverty and helplessness collided there and I wasn't sure what to make out of it. The fact that my own children were completely running amok in the halls of the library, where we were, added to my feeling of extreme gringo-sity.
Later that day in our housing complex some friends were having a cookout so we got a new volleyball net and our yard saw quite a bit of activity. Volleyball is so fun - I'm terrible at it but thoroughly enjoyed it. The food was also incredible including a plantain/sausage ball cooked on the grill, fish, chicken, avocado/carrot salad, fried plantains, potatoes, sausage. It was quite the feast. I have been a little hard on Peruvian food for it's lack of flavor/spice - but this was delicious.
Today we went swimming at another local pool. It's great the way they have things set up here - you pay 3 soles (1 dollar) per person and you have complete run of a playground, pools, soccer field, etc. They park you at a table poolside with a hammock and you can order food/drink and relax for the day. A great deal. Today's pool had quite a slide that Ruby barreled down at least 45 times. And Felix did his fair share riding with David or I. Being able to swim is obviously a privilege if you don't live right by the water (in any country I would imagine) so some kids don't know how to swim that well. They were a little aghast at Ruby's fearlessness but it's just a matter of experience.
It was really a scorcher today. After a much needed siesta by Felix and I, we went out to my favorite pizza restaurant, that happens to have some Mexican food on the menu. Ok, so none of it is all that good (except the guacamole) but it is food that is a bit different from fish, chicken and rice. David wanted us to branch out and go to one of the Chinese restaurants, which is basically the only other branch on the tree. But I knew that would just likely lead to chicken and rice, maybe a slightly different version.
Oh and I did cut Felix's hair for the first time this weekend! Don't worry wild, mop fans it was just dreadlocks prevention, nothing drastic. Also, I'm very pleased to report we have the bug bite situation under control - figured out where some mosquitoes were getting in, having the kids wear bug spray to school, and burning a mosquito smoke deterrent at night. In this way we have avoided bites and the kids don't have to sleep in netting or wear bug spray at night.
(Sorry for the out of order pictures - I'm including some pics of the last few weeks)
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