Earthquake!! (and other tidbits)

So I experienced my third and most intense earthquake today!! Haha, no worries, it only lasted maybe 7 seconds, but I was home alone and it was enough to give me butterflies in my stomach and get my heart racing a little bit! It was only a 5.1 on the Richter scale, but it was cool to hear the people outside reacting over the noise of the earth/houses trembling. Afterwards, I looked outside and saw that everyone just kept moving like nothing happened at all! Lol, gotta love the little reminders that make me realize that no matter how accustomed I am to life here now, it's still way different from my life back in the States.  Of course there's also the fact that it's bordering on 90 degrees and it's the end of the coolest month of the year, and the fact that there was a horse in my garden this morning, and a pig in the middle of the road on my way to school...

I guess I've just become so accustomed to everything that was once new and strange to me here, that I forget to mention a lot of it to you guys.  Here's some of my daily normalcies that are not so normal for typical life in the good ol' U S of A.

* This morning, a mother passed me on her bicycle with her 5 year old daughter sitting side saddle on the bar that runs between the seat and the handle bars and her infant/toddler held in her left arm. She was pedaling uphill and making progress like it was nothing! (Everyone here rides at least two people to a bicycle, many times with full grown adults – me included – sitting sideways on the bar in front of the seat. I've yet to be the one pedaling someone else around because I don't have my own bike yet, therefore I just accept rides when they're offered to me!)

*  Yesterday, after giving summer school classes during the morning, two of the boys from my English class/youth group showed up to help me build the fence around my garden.  They came with machetes and hole-makers (haha idk the word for the tool in English or Spanish) and were 100% ready to do it all themselves! Five minutes later, they were outside the school perimeter in the trees, cutting down branches that would work for posts.  They worked so hard and it was like nothing to them!  And these are the same “urban” kids I thought would never be willing to get dirty and work in my garden.  I guess I shouldn't be so quick to assume.

*  One of my favorite things about my town is the amazing variety of food being sold by people walking in the streets yelling out the names of the things they're selling. Usually the women/children have their tortillas in buckets dangling from their bicycle handlebars, or their baked goods/vegetables/fruits/etc balanced in huge baskets on their heads. Yesterday on my way to teach English, one lady was selling cacao frescos for 2 cords (11 cents)!! Needless to say I bought one.  Oh and how could I forget the ice cream man who pedals his tricycle/freezer full of ice cream all around town? Hearing the bells on that bike has made my day on more than one occasion!

*  Another great thing about my town is that during the day/evening, everyone has their doors open. The general evening past-time here is to walk around town and stop by houses of family members or friends, just to chat for a little while (or a few hours, depending on who's doing the visiting/hosting). It's so tranquilo to walk around the streets and see everyone sitting outside on their porches, or on the sidewalks in their rocking chairs just relaxing and enjoying each other's company.  There doesn't ever seem to be a sense of stress or prisa (rush) in the air.  This week, my host cousins and I have turned their street into a volleyball court (without a net of course). After dinner, we trickle down to the grandma's house a few at a time, and just start hitting the ball around out front.  We played for more than two hours last night and ended up with 8 more people than we started with! Gotta love it.