Celebrations and Safety Matters....

So when I wrote yesterday, I totally forgot that it was the 4th of July. So, Happy Independence Day late! Hope it was great for everyone! We didn´t have any big plans because, well, it wasn´t a holiday here but Lily surprised us with a BBQ! She has a traditional wood burning stove in her backyard so we roasted hotdogs, made smores and celebrated in style. She is awesome to do that for us. She is probably the most thoughtful person I know. It has been great living with her family, I am learning a lot from them (Spanish, new recipes and about who I aspire to be).
It is just another rainy day in Paradise here. It rained all last night (which is our favorite time for it to rain because then the street dogs don´t bark like crazy) but the bad thing about that is all the roads turned to mud this morning. Ben and I look like Dumb and Dumber on this little, blue, P.O.S. motorbike with mud splashing all over us. Lame. I wish that I had my camera to take a picture of Ben. He had so much mud on his face that he looked like the peeps down here.
Here are some pics from the past week. I am really upset because this stupid computer program won´t turn my pictures the right direction. I even had Edwin who is a computer whiz check it out and it was a no go. Sorry-you´re just going to have to turn your head. In some of the pictures, I would like to demonstrate the strong level of safety standards that the people adhere to.

 Here are the hermana missionaries. The one on the right is Hermana Ramos, the one that is afraid of Ben and the one on the left is Hermana Olsen, which is my buddy. We hang out with them every week. Yesterday we all got ice cream together. I think that Hermana Ramos is warming up to Ben a bit. It took a lot of work but she will finally talk to him.

Safety Picture #1- when it rains, put a plastic bag on your head. This is a cow lady in front of our house. Yes, people walk their cows like they are dogs down here.

This is Ben and the kids washing Cookie, the best dog in Central America. She is so affectionate; she gives us our dog fix since ours are at home.

This is when it rained last week. The street literally turned into a river.

Safety Picture #2- when they have jammed 30 people into one of the minibuses (a van) that doesn´t stop them from picking up more people. Unfortunately, we were those people last weekend. For about 20 minutes, we rode hanging outside of the bus. Freaking sucked-it´s not like they try to drive slower or careful, just their normal crazy selves.

Safety Picture #3- this relates to picture #1-when it rains, put a plastic bread bag on your toddler and a plastic walmart bag on your other toddler. We would HATE for them to get wet!