Saturday, August 29, 2015 -- Month #6 - Week #28 - Day #194 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Soooo no one was home today! Whoohoo! Which means more walking than usual to find people to visit, which means really tired legs and footsies. But that's alright, we always manage to make it through to the end of the day!

And my poor little knee!  It's scabbed up and ok now, a little bruised.
Healing up nicely.

Today a lot of interesting things ended up happening, I would like to let the world know that I fell for the first time since I've been here, and have a small wound on my left knee. We were hiking up one of the numerous inclines here and my right foot slid up and to the side, while my left leg bent to compensate and I hit my knee on the rocks below, Hna Rosas immediately pulled me up and we kept on walking like nothing happened. I'm totally fine, it's just always interesting to have your brain realize that your body is no longer moving in a horizontally forward direction, but an immediate vertically downward way. My knee bled a little, so I have officially given all of blood, sweat, and tears to the mission so far. But it's nothing big, it's like if you pushed your thumbnail into your skin and it leaves an imprint, about that size and shape. It'll heal up nicely and I'll be fine!

I also ate M&M's for the first time in 6 months, I can't tell you how much the taste reminded me of home. It's amazing how your brain associates tastes and scents and sounds with such strong emotional reactions. I'd read and studied about that, of course, but it's interesting to experience that concept.

So for a few moments during lunchtime I was in our kitchen back home, with the green walls, sitting at the table and looking out the window to the backyard, filled with oak and cedar trees, hearing the dishwasher run and cars pass by on the street, waiting for Lyndsey and Samuel to come home from school and go directly to the fridge to grab something to eat, and start talking about their day, and Mom would come in from the computer room where she'd been working on a project for one of her callings, and give them a hug and a kiss, and remind them that we'll eat dinner in an hour because there's mutual that night, and Dad has a meeting afterwards so Lyndsey has to drive there and back, and to check on the "homework situation", and later Dad would come home and get ready to leave again for Scouts, and then after mutual and everything it's homework time until late at night where we got ready for bed again to start another day. All in a second, and you experience a whole day's worth of memories. Weird!

In other news from Honduras, all the women here use skirts. Straight cut, not flowy, and extend to a little above the knee. And usually tank tops or camis, bras are optional. If you're over 25 years old you have your hair up in a clip or a bun, never down. Makeup is fairly uncommon, but sometimes there's some mascara and lipstick, usually for church. Guys usually are in jeans or some sort of pants, with a t-shirt. Also, school uniforms are in force, no matter what school you go to. And crocs are pretty popular as well, which surprised me, over in SPS there's a lot of them as well. Often used with socks. You never go around inside or outside barefoot or just in socks, you always have some kind of shoe or flip-flop on.

And, the members in whose house we're living got a puppy a few days ago! His name is Sultan "sool-TAHN" Paz Garcia, and I love him! I don't know what breed he is, but he's all soft and happy and sweet. He's gonna grow up into a very big dog, but he'll be treated well here, so there shouldn't be any problems. Hna Rosas of course isn't a fan of him, but I like him just fine. He has straight, very short white fur with tan colored splotches, blue eyes, and floppy ears. He likes to have his tummy rubbed and jump up and down. Cute little guy.