Today we went to the water park. This was a "down day" that was originally scheduled for Wednesday, but we decided to move it to Thursday since VBS would be finished then. All of the kids took this change in schedule very well, with the exception of one of ours.
We met at Mamma Mago's house and got on the bus at around 8:30. On the bus, Brenda White had the kids raise their right hand and take a pledge that they would not complain - no matter what happened that day, to include if the water park was not even open. They all took the pledge.
The drive to Abosolo was very pretty. The road left from the back side of Boquillas and went up over a ridge, with Abosolo on the other side of the ridge and down the valley on the other side. I continue to be amazed with how rocky the farmland is here.
When we got to the "La Caldera" water park, they charged the adults half price ($48 pesos) since "not everything in the park was open". This was a bad sign, I knew, and I started thinking about the complaining that would come from our kids. It wasn't really true that not everything was open. Actually, *none* of the rides were open. And there were no lifeguards in the entire park, so it was obvious that they weren't expecting very many people (anyone?) to show up that day. I'm was a little shocked that they would let anyone in at all with no lifeguards. I guess my roots in litigious American culture are showing a little.
Mark was disappointed and had an extremely negative reaction. It was partly that nothing was open and partly that it took us so long to get sunscreen on, get changed, get our stuff organized, and get into the water. He was hard to handle during this time, but once we got into the water he settled down. Actually, I thought that all of the kids handled the situation extraordinarily well.
The water park was filled with palm trees and was absolutely beautiful. There were quite a few flumes and some very steep slides that looked pretty fun. And the park was filled with tables that, I'm sure, are packed with kids and families on a summer day. There were crews of workers sandblasting the flumes, the lines to which were blocked off with police tape.
Although none of the slides and plumes were open, most of them had very large pools at the bottom, and we were able to swim in these. They were warm and, I'm told, were naturally heated by a hot spring. There was a large wave pool that was also open, albeit with no waves. It was refreshing to just relax in the water.
Before not too long, a group of people were leaving to go shopping in the market district of Abosolo. I decided to stay with the kids so that they could swim because I knew they would not be ready to leave yet. This turned out to be fairly stressful. At one point, I had 5 kids in the pool with me, none of them mine, whose parents had told me "Watch him/her. They don't really swim, so keep an eye out". Praise God I didn't lose any of them, although I had a scary moment with Gus right off the bat. Another interesting moment was the huge snake that swam into the wave pool. Some workers killed it after it swam across the pool and climbed up the other side.
Laura shopped and bought some small bowls, aprons, and something that would serve as a Christmas ornament. We all had (warm) showers before dinner, which felt truly awesome. We left the park after dinner and had a long wait for the bus driver. Had a locked bus, but no driver, which gave us a chance to stand around aimlessly for 35 minutes in the barrio. Turns out the bus driver had walked up the street to get some dinner.
The Leon church was setup when we arrived back at Mamma Mago's and we enjoyed worshipping with them again. Lots of praise songs, a sermon about accepting Christ, and an invitation at the end for anyone to come forward and accept Jesus. Nicholas was at church (again!), and I was praying earnestly for him to go forward, but he did not. I am still praying for Nicholas and will continue to do so. Finished the night processing the day and the trip so far with Laura over a bag of choco snacks from the tienda. She mentioned that she views the culture here as somewhat selfish and provided some support for that view. I think that this is true of the culture everywhere.
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