RAIN!!!!

It rained today. It rained for about an hour and a half, two hours max. That doesn't sound like a big deal, does it? It rains every other day at home or sometimes for a few days in a row. Ball games might be cancelled, and that's about the extent of it. But not here... For one, it rarely rains here. Therefore, they're not really set up for rain. For example, they don't really have a sewer system. When my dad and I were here on our first trip it rained on Thursday morning for about an hour, then Friday evening when we walked to a restaurant for dinner we had to walk way around the streets full of water. Today, after just two hours of rain we spent one hour and 45 minutes driving back, with water seeping into the floor of the car. There were many, many cars stalled on the road; ours stopped running once, but the driver was able to get it going again. The water was up to the middle of most cars' tires and people were taking off their shoes, rolling up their pantlegs and walking through water halfway up their calves! After 45 minutes of driving in this and observing the stalled cars and very wet people, we were really at a standstill. The driver then asked us if we could walk the rest of the way! We knew where we were, and we weren't too far from the hotel, so we did! I had on sandals, but Wade had tennis shoes with socks, so he took off his socks and shoes like everyone else and walked barefoot. It was about a 15 minute walk, or wade, through the water until we reached the hotel, two hours after we had left the orphanage! (It usually takes about 15-30 minutes, depending on traffic, to get from the orphanage to the hotel.) It was then 8pm and we were very hungry! Surprisingly our friends from TN had waited for us to eat!!! So, we went down the hall to the hotel restaurant and ate with them there.

I know I didn't post yesterday, so I'll sum up Jill's visits from yesterday and today all in one. This won't be too hard to do, as she did mostly the same things both days. The best news is that she now lets us read the books to her! She used to just flip through the pages, but wasn't patient enough to sit and listen. Now, she does! In fact she made me read Dr. Suess's ABC's three times in a row today! She also played with stringing beads. She has very good hand eye coordination and could guide the wooden bead with a fairly small hole in it over the tip of the shoelace type string, pull it out the other side, and slide it down to the end! Later she took the wooden beads and enjoyed putting them into the stacking cups. Another thing she did was imitate something I had done with a bead and the two biggest stacking cups. I had put one bead in a cup, placed a second cup of almost equal size on top to enclose the bead and shook it making a type of homemade instrument. She liked that and tried it with several other beads and sizes of cups. She also liked the Fisher Price doll we brought. It's like a Polly Pocket, but about 10 times bigger. You snap the clothes on and off. She has a brush to comb her hair, a hat, headband, dress, pants, a shirt, and shoes. So, we changed her clothes several times. There are several of these dolls out there; ours is named Gabrielle and has light brown hair. I bought it before we met Jill and sure enough, Jill has light brown hair too! Perfect!

This morning we all (the two other couples and us) went to the Babies R Us type store, Banana Mama. We bought two sweaters for Jill, a pink one and a multicolored one, and a beautiful butterfly dress! I took a picture of the dress, so I'll post it here now. I'll also try to upload my video clips of the 'flooding', one of Wade walking in it and one of how bad it made the traffic.