Friday, June 22, 2007

Game day!
Each year, the team faces off against the local folks, mostly church members, on the baseball diamond! Talia, Vicki and Lynn came up with a great idea to create a shaded “dugout” using ponchos on the rack of the truck. I can’t pitch, hit, or run, so I guarded the water in the dugout. It was really great to have the shade! It seemed like only a short time until the game was over. We lost this year! :-(

We went back to the camp for an afternoon nap, and to get our things together. Then we came back to the church for the community farewell, with kind speeches from the leaders in the community, and the president of the neighborhood association.

When we got back to camp and had finished supper, we decided it was time for another annual tradition: the tarantula hunt! Since Fred wasn’t along, and I thought it would be good to have a male presence, I invited our interpreters, Dilio and Eliezer. Eliezer was surprised to learn there were tarantulas to be found. Both wanted to know what we were going to do with them. We said we just take pictures. So, I grabbed the big flashlight, and Dilio, Eliezer, Courtney, Katie, Sarah and I went tarantula hunting. Dilio is a natural – he found tarantulas the rest of us would have missed. One was so far in its hole that, even after he pointed it out, we had to look twice to see it. We found four, including one that made its home in the outside wall of the men’s restroom.