Trains, Schplatts, Etc.
Tuesday, June 10I think that the record for hitting snooze buttons was broken today. I know for sure that someone hit it three times, Elizabeth hit it four times, and I hit mine every five minutes for over a half hour. At least its better than yesterday when Josué hit my alarm clock across the room where it shattered in a total of four pieces. Devotions were amazing, as well as uplifting. We talked about what it means to be a minister of the gospel.
We all loaded into the bus, when Daniel asked me, “do you feel like running.” It turned out that I needed to find some salt, and run it back to David, who was not with us due to a minor sickness, of which he is almost recovered. Running in five degrees Celsius is not one of my strong points, but I laid it down for the team, even hurting my brand new Pumas. On returning to the bus, we left for the zoo, which we were informed cost two thousand million dollars to build. (Kaytra’s exact wording.) Needless to say, walking around this zoo was a lot of fun. We saw everything from flamingos to six-gilled sharks. It took us a while to find somewhere to eat, because Argentines close all shops at two until they re-open at seven. (For siestas of course.)
We fed some geese a crushed Nutri-Grain bar. (Courtesy of LAN Airlines, and carried out by Crystal, John and Kaytra.) We then watched a 360 degrees movie. I think that I turned my neck a couple times too many. All of the scapes held the Creator’s signature. Ice cream was the only thing on some people’s minds. Dulce de leche, multi-fruit, chocolate chip cookie dough, and mint chocolate chip were only a few of the flavors shared by these individuals. We are all quickly learning to buy enough for over ten people to taste, and yet still be able to enjoy your own ice cream.
After the zoo trip, we dropped our team leaders off at JUMBO: the Argentine version of WalMart. We quickly changed, and headed out for our second night of children’s program. We arrived, and set up the various activities. I cut tape, Loriane attached them, and Dena punched holes. Anyone know how many team members it takes to make 60 parachutes in a half hour? About 6, with maybe a little extra help. The children’s program went extremely well. David, Carolina and I had a lot of fun playing red light/green light. (It shortened to just rojo y verde) We were all very amused as Daniel played Dr. Schplat, and Elizabeth played Maggie. Everyone froze as the night came on, and the warmth of the sun left us. It’s not just Floridians who froze either. There was only one wisdom walk, and I only had to threaten to make two boys stay in the push-up position all night, so tonight went quite well.
We decided not to go out to dinner tonight, but instead have some of our friends here buy us some food so that we could eat in the hotel (Instead of staying up until past 12 getting dinner). We jumped in the bus and started down the road. While crossing a railway, we watched a train come toward us, which had happened before, so we were all fine with it. This time, the bus stalled, and we were left stranded in the middle of the tracks with a train moving closer. Someone yelled get off, but no one moved at all. People started fidgeting. I watched calmly as Daniel threw Tim forward, and Kaytra screamed. We all tensely exited the bus, as the train was quite close now. Everyone’s adrenaline was running, we watched the bus, expecting any moment for it to burst into flames. There was a ROAR… the engine came to life, and the bus rolled to safety. Unfortunately, someone dropped the fruit bag, and apples and bananas were all over the road. (Editor’s Note: the train was only starting to move, but it was definitely in the wrong direction.) (Nathaniel’s take back: it sounds more exciting not to tell how fast the train was going, and leave out the fact that the train had actually stopped. We really did all exit the bus in a hurry.) We got back to the hotel, had dinner, and sang. We ended the day with a bang (oh wait, that was David’s head hitting the closet door.)
Out for the Team,
Nathaniel/Nat/Nate/Nat-an-ael
Daniel as Dr. Schplatt
