A three-part day

This morning:
We were kindly invited to attend a workshop. Our friends Jodi and Felicia hosted the event. Felicia owns some land in San Pablo (just 5 minutes up the road from San Marcos). She has started a project of creating an organic garden and is looking to teach the community how to get on board. Jodi is a yoga instructor and is very interested in medicinal plants. We met them both last July. Jodi called last week to invite us to their first medicinal plant workshop. We thought it would be fun and interesting to see what we could learn. It didn't even occur to us that the speaker would be speaking in Spanish! Well, makes perfect sense, but Jodi speaks English and we just took it for granted that her friend would, too. This workshop was for the community, so it seems obvious (now) that it would be catering to the local language. Doh. I was catching on to a few concepts he was talking about, but after a half hour, we realized it was kind of useless to stick around. We thanked our hostesses and quietly left. All the more reason to learn Spanish, eh?

This afternoon:
After leaving the workshop, we had to do some errands at the fereteria (hadware store) and we needed to pick up some milk at the grocery store in Santa Maria. While in the grocery store, we notice tucked in the back, they are now serving Chinese take-out! What? The new owners of the grocery store are first-generation Chinese so I guess they have the market cornered. We couldn't resist a try. We asked for a menu and surprise, surprise ... it was written in Spanish! Well, it could have been worse—it could have been Chinese. It was delicious and quite a treat.

---

The red line indicates the bridge portionl

This evening:
I'm not sure what happened, I was feeling right as rain, but after lunch, I started coughing. I started feeling like I was getting a head cold. I decided to cancel my English class so I called all my students to let them know. Then at 4 pm, Clara calls to tell me the bridge—the one that was just built two weeks ago and the one that I need to cross to get to Copey to teach my class— is overflowing. Kevin went to have a look and he says large tree branches have fallen and are now blocking the pipes. Rocks and sand are accumulating against the branches, creating a dam. The river is now overflowing this fragile bridge. It's no longer safe to drive over so I wouldn't be able to teach tonight anyway. I'm glad we were home when it happened. Tomorrow, Martin will call the municipality. We need a digger to clean out the blockage. Just a few more weeks until summer arrives. We hope :)

---