Old Fashioned Fun

This is just a beautiful picture of a jungle sky.

Fun Fact No. 4a: Blonde isn't just blonde. You often see little kids around here that have kind of orangey-blonde hair. No, their mothers didn't have a fling with the crazy gringo tourist. It's actually malnutrition.

Well, this Christmas holiday was just good old fashioned fun. After a yummy turkey dinner with not just the whole family, but also with all the boys that work in the lumber yard, all the extended relatives from upriver, plus all kinds of stragglers and the gringa, we toasted with champagne at midnight on the 24th and rang in Christmas by going to other people's houses to visit them. It was great fun. We ended up at this lovely bar that our friend Wendy is in charge of while the owner is out of town. It's called La Taberna del Cauchero and it's really stunning - 20 foot high ceilings, handcrafted chairs and tables, floor to ceiling windows with a great view of the Amazon river, and a great sound system. We just chatted with old friends, danced a bit, and went home. Pretty chill.

The next day (Christmas Day officially), we piled in (and I'm talking PILED IN) the truck and took to the road. We headed out to a bridge over the Itaya river where there's a beach (well, kind of. The rivers are swelling right now with all the rain from upriver), volleyball courts, soccer fields, and lots of people selling food. We played volleyball (and I didn't completely suck. Only mostly sucked!) and swam in the ice cold river and ate tacacho (plantain balls - one of my favorites!) and drank soda and shot the bull.
















































On the way home, we could see the rain about one or two kilometers away. It's funny how it works here. Super sunny where we were but you could see the wall of rain down the road. It's like someone did a PeeWee's Adventure move and brought out a fake curtain with a rainy landscape painted on it. It can be that dramatic. We got the three smallest kids in front and tried to fashion umbrellas out of cardboard boxes that we had been sitting on. When we got to the rain it just gushed down, but it was neat because then you could see the sun on the other side. It's kind of Charlie Brown in style - the one raincloud over just the one person.

We got home a bit soggy and cold, so I went out with my goddaughter, Silvia, to eat hot soup. We were going to have this yummy ginger soup at a Chinese joint down the road, but there is construction on that road so there were lots of little stands selling gallina regional soup. Gallina regional is regional chicken, which means that it was grown in someone's backyard instead of in a huge pen with other chickens. It's got especially tender meat and the soup is made with a TON of cilantro, lime, aji (spicy pepper), and noodles. It's just heavenly on a cold evening. Then we rented "High School Musical" and watched it until we fell asleep. And when I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night, this is what I encountered:















Ojona the cat nestled up with a bunch of beer bottles. Ha!



This sign made me laugh. For those of you who read Spanish, you'll get it right away. For those of you who don't, well, beer in Spanish is cerveza. C-E-R-V-E-R-Z-A. I'm just saying.



















Food today:
breakfast: pb & j (I needed something normal)
lunch: ceviche
dinner: (still) leftover turkey.

Food yesterday:
breakfast: nothing
lunch: grilled fish, tacacho, Inca Cola
dinner: gallina regional soup