Too much sitting numbs my bum

On Sunday we had made plans to visit Yoli’s uncle Adonai again, since he told us that weekends are the best time to come by. We had some breakfast and then spent time together talking about Ecclesiastes chapter 3, which is what our friends in the Bible study in St. Louis studied Saturday.

We had a nice time at Uncle Adonai’s. He is married to a woman named Miriam, but they have no children. Instead he has 3 parrots, 2 cats, and 4 dogs. The dogs all look like they could be bichon frises (the same breed as my dog Jed). In Bolivia, dogs are pretty much allowed to run where they wish. Adonai keeps his dogs within his property, so they don’t come into contact with other dogs except from behind the gate. But they still run freely on bare ground, and get pretty dirty.

But the dogs are so cute. They are the right size for bichons, little bitty things, unlike Jed who is unusually large for the breed. They all clearly had different personalities. Adonai was going to bathe them, and the dogs figured this out. The oldest one, called Gordita because she is fat), hid immediately. But she was found eventually and got washed. When they were all washed, Adonai tied them to a stake in the yard so they wouldn’t get into dirt while they dried off. They were all shivering, which I wondered about, since it wasn’t cold outside. Yoli reminded me that they probably had a cold bath.

Adonai is a jokester and he has many jokes to tell for any given occasion. His jokes are usually the story kind. He’s a voracious reader, and likes to learn about new inventions. As we talked during lunch (a very late lunch), I discovered that he knew a lot about the modern history of Israel and its wars, a subject that has fascinated me for a long time.

It was interesting to see his grilling setup. There was a brick enclosure, and then several levels of metal grating. One was for the coals, and another for the meat. The meat rack could be raised and lowered with a chain.

Miriam is an accountant and I didn’t get to talk with her as much because she had a friend from college over to visit and they spent much of their time together. But she did make some good food for us. She made some sort of corn salad that tasted better than I expected… It was fresh corn cut from the cob, not out of a can. The grilled meat was good, too, excellent flavor. Like the other night at Yoli’s house, it had too much fat for me, but the meat was much more tender.

At 4:00, we realized we had stayed too long at Adonai’s house (2 hours too long!) and needed to leave to get to Yoli’s house. Her dad had complained earlier this week that I hadn’t been to the house since Sunday. So we wanted to make sure we came and spent some time there.

We planned to watch the Ben-Hur DVD I got Yoli for her birthday last year with Eliza and Boris. I brought my computer to hook up to their TV. The movie was good, but extremely long. My rear end went numb twice during the movie. Thank goodness for the intermission which required us to eject the DVD and flip it over (yes, a double-sided DVD).

Lucy’s kids began making a lot of noise later in the movie. Her brother-in-law Alcides joked and said “Bye, Lucy” anticipating that Lucy would have to take the kids and leave. But Lucy keenly pointed out that his own baby would soon be at noise-making age and then it would be she who could say “Bye, Alcides!” during movies.

All in all it was a fun day, but now the weekend is over, so it will be time to get back to work.