Spring is Beautiful

  Spring is beautiful over here with all of the jacaranda trees in bloom, you can see their gorgeous purple flowers all over the city.  Down towards the 'downtown' area is a lake with a statue out in the middle,  it has these beautiful jacaranda trees all the way around it.  It is quite a sight.

You want to be careful walking under a jacaranda tree.  The flowers are like little cups that fill with water in the night and then as the day warms up the little cups of water turn upside down and the water spills out.  Sister Richards thought that a bird got her really good the other day when she walked under one of the trees!  She was relieved to see it was only water.

   Whenever you go anywhere and get stopped in traffic - which is ALL of the time.  There is always someone that comes up to your car with their hand out begging for anything that you might give them.  Lots of times it's the little kids, but it is people of all ages.  Apparently, no one feels ashamed to beg here.  I just had to take a picture of this lady with two babies.  After we took her picture we gave her something.

  Most of the people here have very little.  More than 70% of the people live on less than 2,000 AR a day, which is less than $1 USD.  I can't imagine what it would be like to try and find enough money each day just to feed your kids.  These two babies don't look like they are starving, but we have seen some who are really skinny and do look like they are starving. 
  The lady and her two kids who live by the garbage dumpster down the street from us look hungry.  They sit there all day and go through what everyone throws away, hoping for something that they can use or eat.  When we take our garbage out I try to put some things that they can eat or use in plastic bags so that it doesn't get dirty.  All of the garbage dumpsters all over the city are gone through numerous times before the garbage is finally hauled away.  We are so blessed!  It makes us feel guilty that we are so blessed, and so are our children and grandchildren.

  I've always told Dad that 'I am not a pioneer'.  Living here must be a little bit what it was like for our pioneer ancestors.  Most of the people have no indoor bathroom, they have to haul whatever water they use, dirt floors, one room houses, no glass windows, hopefully they have shutters that they can close.  We live in a nice little apartment, but many around us live very humble lives.  Every day I am thankful for my toilet that flushes and the water that runs out of the tap for a shower, even on the days when it is just a trickle and you hope it will be enough to get the soap rinsed off.

  Just to the side of our house they are building another level on a two story little building.  They build them out of bricks that they make out of the mud out in the rice paddies.  During the winter here they make bricks out in the rice paddies; I guess that is why each little rice paddie has a 'lip' all the way around it.  They clear out the mud making bricks and then when it rains, it floods each individual little rice paddy and the water stays in the field to water the rice.  When they have a bunch of the bricks all made they stack them all up with a hollow spot in the middle and then light a fire inside to cure the bricks.  As you drive down the country you see lots of little mounds of bricks 'smoking' out in the rice fields.
  As we have watched him build we have noticed that he puts a 'little bit' of dirt and water between the bricks, then taps on them until they look even with the others around it.  This afternoon he was putting a piece of wood all around the top, he's probably getting ready to put the roof on.  It's none too soon for the roof as it usually rains every evening now. 
  He will end up putting some plaster or concrete looking stuff on the outside and then it will look like it is a concrete building and will look very sturdy.  But we know what is really on the inside of those walls!  There is an eight story apartment building just down from the Mission Home, and it is built the same way.  Sure hope there is never an earthquake here - everything will crumble!