P Day Exhaustion

 January 5  Monday

I thought that a missionary P-Day was meant to relax from daily work and catch up on other things, and have a break from everyday activities. But I guess if we are not officially missionaries, it doesn't apply to us. The plan was to study our Portuguese lesson for our class on Tuesday.  This day ends in total exhaustion with no studying accomplished.

At 8:00 am, we received a call that Wilson had a key to his house and we could meet him to start cleaning the kitchen.  The hopes are to be able to fix the roof over a small bedroom so the rain doesn't pour in, make the kitchen usable for cooking, eating, studying, etc.  The little stove has a gas leak right now.  So David, Merl, and I walked to Wilson's home to see what we could accomplish in a few hours.  (Ann stayed home to clean and run some errands.) 

The stairway on the side of the house isn't usable, so we put a ladder on the front landing to go inside.  David and I started on the kitchen, and Merl worked in the small sitting area next to the kitchen, picking up garbage, sorting clothes and stuff.  He then had the fun job of scrubbing out the moldy refrigerator.  Cleaning is difficult because there is no hot water plumbed to the houses.  If you want hot water, you heat it on the stove (Wilson has a gas leak, so no heating) or install a point-of-use water heater. 

Kitchen faucet - the white is the
sun showing through the hole

Our apartment is also that way.  We heat water on the stove to do dishes, and we have a point of use heater on the shower head.  I used lots of soap and Clorox to wash dishes and wash out cupboards.  David reattached a cupboard door and fixes the drawers.  We all sorted stuff and cleaned up an area that Wilson can now use.  He still has his small bedroom under the house, and the bathroom is also outside of the main structure.

We worked until 11:30 and hurried home to grab a bite of lunch before the Copas would arrive.  They called and wanted to get together again today to go sight seeing.  As it turned out, they shared lunch with us - lasagna and salad.  (Only one more small pan of lasagna in the freezer.)


Horseshoe Canyon from previous trip

We jumped in the car, Sister Copa taking the trunk again.  She is a crazy lady.  This time she even had a padded 'chair' to sit on. Our plan was to go to Horseshoe Canyon and then meet up with the missionaries at 2:00 at Caracol Falls Park.  The entrance to Horseshoe Canyon was closed, so we started on another one of our driving adventures on crazy dirt roads following a sign to Paracõens Parque. The park was in a beautiful valley setting overlooking a deep canyon with farmlands on the opposite side of the river. Kind of an expensive stop of 30-45 minutes - 8 reis each.



We hiked around the perimeter overlooking the canyon, and saw the cliffs the park was named after.

We could have spent more time exploring, but we had made arrangements with the missionaries to meet them at Caracol Falls.

Not knowing exactly how long it was going to take us to get back on the main road, we decided to hit the road (almost literally as with the heavy load and the rough road, we hit bottom a few times).   


Merl in nature heaven

 

See you at Caracol Falls!
(the day to be continued)