Losing Blogs!!

I typed about an hour long blog last night and lost the darn thing, gave up and went to bed. The internet here is so hit or miss. Anyway, yesterday was great as we went to the market with Ruth!! Ruth is an incredible house keeper that the woman renting the apartment before me suggested that I keep on when I arrived in Antigua. I really didn’t see the need, I didn’t have a baby to care for, the apartment is only about 600 sq ft. What would someone do from 9:30 to 2 or 3pm everyday during the week. Well, let me tell you, we are joking about trying to get two visas while we are down here!!! Ruth is amazing. She keeps the place immaculate, washes our clothes (by hand), makes an incredible lunch for us, preparing left overs ect, she goes to the market and loves kids. Of course she only speaks Spanish but we are learning!
We all went to the open air Mercado with her on Friday. The Mercado can be intimidating if not daunting as an outsider. However, Ruth led the way, knew exactly who to buy from, what to buy, what was the freshest and cheapest. I would have been completely clueless. Then she came home and made us this incredible chicken, veggie, rice soup with home made tortillas and guacamole. It was like having a Hispanic version of my friend Ninu from home who I taut as the best cook on this earth ( Helen, you run a close second!!) practically living with us. Ruth is just a really neat woman. She is 56 and has done this for many fostering families.
The other fun thing we did was meet a group of fostering families at a local restaurant for dinner. Most of them have babies all around the 7 month mark and range from being here a week to up to a year!
We went to Hotel Antigua to the pool today. It is a small hike across town but do able. The grounds are beautiful and the pool is great and heated!! Thank goodness because the girls stayed in for almost two hours.
There is also an adjacent little playground which is very nice. Maria clearly has never had the opportunity to swim other than with us or be on a playground with swings and climbing things. It is remarkable in a way to see her lack of body awareness and lack of coordination initially but she is quite determined ( if not a complete bull in a china shop) to master any task.
The pool can be a little scary with her because she has no concept that she is about a hair from drowning at any given point if you are not there to remind her to take her head out of the water! She does love it, so eventually she will get the concept.
We definitely have our challenging moments with Maria. She is very strong willed and it is so difficult because we can’t explain certain things to her, and many times our limited Spanish commands come across rather didactic I am sure. I am looking into hiring a tutor to hang out with us in the morning to help me communicate with her and for me to understand what she is saying. Like I said, we are starting the second part of our journey!!