New Friends - Saturday, September 18, 2010

It felt good to sleep in until 7:00 and perhaps we could have stayed in bed longer, but we weren't exactly sure what we were going to end up doing today, so I needed to get myself going since I take the longest to get ready for anything. Rich caught a few more winks while I got in the shower.

Then, while he was showering I thought I would make some Betty Crocker Blueberry Muffins from a package mix that my sister sent to us a while back in a care package. In reading the instructions I noticed that by adding a few more things from the cupboard, I could make pancakes out of it. That sounded like a change and a fun thing to have for breakfast, so I whipped them up. They were very tasty and we enjoyed every bite.

I changed the sheets and gathered up the towels and things that we take to the lavandaria across the street. Rich could see from our balcony that she was open, so that errand didn't take him long at all. I just might miss that service when I am home. Everything else I wash in our washing machine and hang to dry on our portable clothes rack. Due to the humidity and the fact that this little washing machine doesn't ring things out super good, some of our laundry takes two days to dry.

Today I did two loads of Rich's shirts, some white and some casual. Some of them I hung on our clothes rack and put out on the balcony in the sun and breeze to start drying, and when I brought them in, the fresh smell permeated the room. It was heavenly!

Even though the sun was shining, the air was brisk and cool and we didn't know if we would be too cold walking around sightseeing up in the Capital. We have a date with the other senior couples at 6:00 to go to the home of our new doctor who arrived a couple weeks ago. They are having a pot luck game night at their place and invited us to come. We are excited to go as we have never met them, so we thought that we might go earlier in the day and see/do something before going to the party. But, the temperatuare outside didn't convince us that we could enjoy being outside for five or six hours before going to the party.

I started my Saturday cleaning and took care of a medical call while Rich went to our little neighborhood grocery store to get bread, eggs, bleach, and budin de carne (corned beef). I bought some cabbage a few days ago and could not find the corned beef at two different places that we shopped. I asked him to just see if by chance they might have some, and low and behold they did!! I was so pleased and surprised. So corned beef and cabbage it is this week. Can't wait.

Since we were dragging our feet about leaving home, I decided to tackle a project I have been wanting to do for weeks. I sent Rich to the basement to get one of our suitcases from our cage. I pulled from the top of our closet all the souvenirs we have purchased for ourselves and to give away when we get home. I laid everything out to see exactly what we have purchased and how many of everything we had. I made a detailed list of what was there and what we still need to buy. Then, I packed it all in the suitcase to give to our girls to take back with them when they come to visit next month. We plan to give them two suitcases full of things we want taken home to lighten our load that we will take with us. We will buy two cheap suitcases here to replace those we send with them. It was such a good feeling to see what we had and get this all figured out.

On our way to the train station, we stopped at one of our favorite panadarias to buy a postre to share at the get together. We chose something that resembled an apple pie because we have had it before and we both really liked it.

Then we dashed to the train platform and only waited a few minutes before we were on board and headed to the Lesandro de La Torre stop. From there we walked to Libertador and thought there would be buses coming regularly to take up about 20 blocks up the road. We walked a ways and never came upon a bus stop, so we hailed a taxi and the eight pesos we paid for the ride was well worth it. The wind was a little strong and very cool.

On the couch next to us are Elder and Sister Hollingsworth. He is the new Area Medical Advisor and their home is in Cardston, Canada. This is their second mission. Their first mission was serving in Mexico as the Area Medical Advisor, so they worked with Elder and Sister Davidson (the next couple) when he was a Mission President in Mexico. So these two couples are well acquainted. The Hollingsworths do not speak Spanish so they didn't want to come to another Spanish mission, but they were so badly needed here that they agreed to come.

We had an enjoyable evening getting to know one another. Two other couples at Bonpland could not make it tonight, but the six of us had a great time and a great dinner of chicken over rice, tossed salad, hot rolls, and with my apple pie dessert Sister Hollingsworth added some ice cream. Perfect!

After dinner we played a couple of games dealing with forming words. One was similar to Scrabble where we drew tiles and added to them to form words. The other game was Quiddler.

We bid them all farewell at 9:00, our usual departure time, knowing that it takes us about an hour to get home and we don't like to travel on the train too late at night. We started from the beginning of the line at Retiro so we were able to have seats all the way home. That's always good for old tired bodies.

We enjoyed our P-day and now will look forward to going back to join the seniors for General Conference in October.