Jan 7
Today was a fun day. Our hosts arranged for us to go to church with a friend of theirs. It was an interesting service for awhile, but it gets long when you don’t understand anything. We have an electronic translator and I was typing in words constantly. I think the lady next to me was playing a video game. “Rude American!”
We decided to take a little excursion to a nearby artisan town. Highlights include seeing paintings by an artist whose oil paintings Joel bought in Cuba! We had no idea his work would be so widespread and then when we saw the price tag, we think we may have found quite the steal when we bought it. I think it was a 2000% increase, but of course, anything targeted at tourists is really expensive here.
Joel found a coffee tree in a garden where we took a break from shopping and painstakingly peeled coffee berries so he can try his hand at roasting his own coffee this week.
Our host sister and her cousin were our unofficial guides (“unofficial” because they didn’t really know where we were going either; “guides” because at least they could speak enough of the language to figure it out that we were lost). When we ended up in the town of our host sister’s godmother, we decided to drop in on her. That turned out to be quite the visit because Rosa, the godmother, asked if we were hungry and then pulled a giant lasagna out of the oven and we had a pretty spectacular meal. Rosa is a wonderful woman, from what I can tell without understanding more than 30 words in 2 hours, but I like her very much for her gentle spirit and kind hospitality.