Change of Plan

I had a great entry planned for all my faithful readers. I set a side a morning the other day to go around and take pictures. Everyone that reads my blog has made a comment on how they cant really picture or imagine what its like. So I took pictures of the little row of houses where I live, of the farms all around me, of my house its self and of Lurin as well. Of course now that Ive gotten to the internet, its not working. Ive tried three different computers, so I guess Im gonna have to go home and make a new game plan. So instead of having fun pictures to look at, Im gonna do a little venting.

Much like my pictures and the internet, nothing works or goes according to plan. Im a very go with the flow person. I seemed to be able to roll with the punches much better than the majority or people in my group. But this weekend and today, everything seems to be wearing on me. For example. Not only can I not get the compter to read my disk and my pictures, the internet wont open half the pages I want it too and there is a screaming baby in the internet cafe. The parents seem to think its cute, but I want to punt it over a field goal (is that wrong?). The German volunteer at the hogar seems to be in the same rut as I am. She finally fell victim to the million germs all the kids cough onto our food and got sick. I went with her to the pharmacy cause her spanish still isnt great. She said she wanted something for sinus pain and congestion. It was very clear. The pharmacists gave us something for exactly that, so she said. The next day, Antonia couldnt get out of bed she felt so sick. She new there was something wrong with the medication. She called a doctor and turns out, the lady at the pharmacy gave her medication for kidney stones. This was no miscommunication. The pharmacists just had no idea what she was doing. I was warned about this. pharmacists here are not people who are educated about medicine or symptoms, its an unskilled job just as if she were selling candy. Her mistake was realitively harmess, just have Antonia severe stomach pain. But those are the kind of mistakes that can be fatal.

To give her a break from the Hogar and the kids and the sisters, I planned on taking Antonia to the gym on saturday to take the dance class with me. Of course, as soon as we walked all the way to Lurin, all the power in the town went out. We waited an hour, but it never came back on. So no class. I had arranged my whole schedule to try to accommodate all the plans I had made with out neglecting anyone. Instead of spending the evening with Danielle like I would have preferred, I knew I had to honor the plans I made with Antonia. So Danielle and I decided we would have dinner together in Lima on sunday before she got on her overnight bus for Lambeyeque. Danielle went back to training to see her old host family. She thought it would take just a few hours but ended up having to visit 5 other families, and then it was too late for her to meet up with me. So I never got a chance to spend anytime alone with Danielle.

I really wish that A--this child would stop screaming or B--his parents would take him outside.

This morning I did not want to get out of bed. So, I didnt. I didnt wake up until 10:30. I went downstairs, ate my cereal and took my instant coffee with canned milk in it up to my room and sat in bed and read till 1. I felt pretty miserable. I think theres something more than whats going on around me thats effecting me. I think there are some definite hormonal abnormalities going on here. Im usually a lot more level than this. But whatever, thats why I stayed in bed this morning, just gotta wait it out.

Then finally I decided it was time to do something with my day. Laundry. Laundry is hard in my house because there are 10 people who need their clothes washed every week. The few days I had time to do my laundry this past week I was unable to because the laundry machine and clothes lines were already occupied. It seems like Im lucky having laundry machine, but Im pretty sure the process it takes to do laundry in this machine actually takes more time and effort than it would to wash my clothes by hand. Let me explain the process.

1. Ask my host mom if I can do my Laundry
2. The Laundry machine is kept in its box in the kitchen. Whenever somebody wants to do laundry they need to take it out of its box, move it to the other room, and set it up. Seeing as there are people doing their laundry everyday and this process has to be done everytime, it makes perfect sense that we keep it in its box in the kitchen.
3. Connect a plastic hose from bathroom sink to the washing machine and fill the washing tub.
4. Put in clothes and soap.
5. Turn on for 10 minuets and allow soap, water and clothes to mix around.
6. Drain soapy water into buckets that we will later us to bucket flush our toilet.
7. put first half of wet clothes into the second compartment and let it spin around for 2 minuets allowing most of the soapy dirty water to be rung out of the clothes
8. Do the same to the second half.
9. Refill the wash tub full of clean water from the bathroom sink and put clothes back in.
10. turn the machine on and let clean water mix around with the half soapy half dried clothes.
11. Drain this water into more buckets which we will use to bucket flush he toilet.
12. Put half the load into the spin dry compartment and let spin around for 3 minuets. The clothes have to be put in this compartment just right, or else they have to be reloaded. I usually have to reload 2 or 3 times. Each time I load it incorrectly, you can hear it and my host mom comes wondering in to tell me I need to reload it. Duh.
13. Do the same process with the second half of the load.
14. Take the clothes our and hand them up to line dry.

I had to do this process with 2 loads of laundry today. It took 3 hours. And you really cant do anything else while your doing all this because every 5 minuets you have to be doing something. So, laundries a pain, but I guess it gives me something to do and a way to kill a whole afternoon. I have to admit. I felt better doing my laundry than at any other point during the day.

By the way, the baby is still screaming. Seriously?