One of my favorite days yet!

The escapade started at 3pm when I left early from school to help the girls in my hogar cook for one of our Tía’s despedidas (goodbye party). We were in the Ranch kitchen gathering the frozen chickens, bags of spices, and vegetables when the sky opened up and it began to pour. Since we couldn’t exactly wait for the rain to pass, the 10 of us grabbed the ingredients and ran for the smaller kitchen up the hill where we were going to cook. Though this kitchen does have a stove and a sink, we really only use the room to prepare the food that is later cooked in giant pots on fires outside (and the water doesn’t drain from the sink so all dished must be washed from a faucet sticking out of the ground nearby). Since downpours and open fires don’t bode well, it was only natural to move the blaze onto the roof-covered tile porch.

Stefani and I ran around bringing more supplies. She held the umbrella and I ducked under it, though we continued to get soaked since it rains sideways here. I wish you all could meet Stefani. She is so confident and so herself. A few weeks ago in mass I turned around to look at her when I realized she was wearing a crown on her head. Now you either have to be crazy or a badass to walk into mass with a crown on your head and she is definitely the latter. So running around with her was a good time.

Since the rain stalled us a bit and since cooking in large quantities just takes a while, we spent the next 5 hours chopping veggies (mostly cabbage and cucumber), cooking the chicken, making the tortillas, and frying the tacos. 6pm is dinner time, but we didn’t finish until after 8 and we didn’t eat until about 9 … which is an hour past bedtime. My new experience for the day was scraping the lungs and other organs out of the chickens. This totally grossed the kids out, but I didn’t think it was that bad. I’ve come a long way from my childhood days when touching raw meet grossed me out.

For the party, the kids prepared a number of different acts for the tía. They had decorated the room and set up the tables with leaves in glasses of water (I think they were going for flowers, but knew they would get in trouble if they hacked the flowers out of the garden, so giant leaves were what we got). One of acts was a sign saying “see you later” and each kid held a different letter. The best part about that was that they lined up backwards so rather than saying “nos vemos” is read “somevson” :0)

Tía Yeni has worked here for 7 years and although it’s time for her to move on, it was a hard goodbye. It was sad and a lot of people cried, but I couldn’t help but observe how even the crying seemed different. Maybe it is cultural. The kids either hid their eyes in their shirts, a few ducked behind the curtains and the others kept their faces covered. No one made excuses or said anything at all, they just cried. The other half of the kids who were not crying were laughing and playing and I kind of wondered if they were trying to hide their feelings. The tía just sat and silently sobbed for 5 minutes and then we all ate. And that was that.

For one of the acts the kids sang one of the songs from mass. Since it’s a song I really like, I thought I’d include the lyrics (in English) for you all. (I also want to note that I’m not great at translating things yet, which is why the wording is kind of awkward). The song is called “Live”.

You can’t bring anything with you when you march away
When your final day nears
Live happily now while you can
Tomorrow you might not have time

Feel the blood run through your veins
Plant your earth and get to work
Let your thoughts fly freely
Leave bitterness for another time
Set your boat to sail

Open your arms to life
Don’t let anything drift away
You can’t drop anything from heaven
Try to be happy with what you have
Live intensely
Fighting, you’ll succeed

And when your final goodbye arrives
You will surely smile happily
For getting what you loved
For having found what you sought
Because you lived until the very end