Monday, April 1, 2013

culture crossing



April 1
As far as I know April Fool's Day is not celebrated here. That said when our young girl, who comes once a week to help, was sweeping today she handed me an earring she found on the floor. I told her thanks and put it up, a couple of minutes later she said “oh and here is this one” and handed me a dead cockroach! I jumped and yelped, then we laughed. She thought it was very funny! Some humor definitely crosses borders. Harold sprays the house regularly, so it is not a dead cockroach that puts me on alert – just the kind that still want to walk and run!
Semana Santa finished, the nightly parades are interesting here with their drums and dirges and carrying the statues through the town, stopping to pray and preach along the way. No school for the week, so the children enjoyed their break. One strange law we learned though was that people aren't allowed to cut wood for building and only enough for their own home cooking during that week. We only found out because some of the members saw people arrested for transporting wood!
We did a lot of work by phone last week, checking on each of our Spanish speaking missionaries to see how they are doing with their English and giving reminders to everyone to make sure their apartments are clean. We start our inspections round again this week and that is always a lot of fun to visit with all of our missionaries.