cansada

hello, dears! we´ve been at la stala for a month now. and we´re both tired and dirty still. but i think my spanish is improving. and foo´s is for sure. on friday foo stabbed herself in the eye with barley. and she got the chunks out but her eye was still hurting so i was like, let me look, i´ll take out whatever is left. and so i was looking at her eye and trying to poke my finger into it to brush out what looked like fuzz on the brown part of her eye. and i tried to get it out and her eye kept fluttering and her eyelid sort of turned inside out. which is kind of gross looking. but then after a few minutes of this i realized it was not fuzz in her eye. it was the tissue of her eyeball which was torn away and sort of floating on her eyeball. so good thing i didn´t touch it with my finger. we tried to go to a specialist that afternoon, and laura, the host lady, drove us to the hospital first. we were walking in the door and another family was also heading that way, and then laura kicked it into mom-mode and walked faster to get ahead of the family. she pushed in front of the three year old entering the door, knocking the poor kid in the head with her purse. then she went up to the window, first in line, of course, and knocked on it and then on the wood desk til finally the lady came out. the hospital doesn´t see patients with eye problems. bueno. so we go to a specialist office, where there are three women working at the reception. and no doctor. and he won´t be in at all today, or tomorrow. ok, so we leave and i ask why there are three receptionists and no doctor. one to serve the mate, one to get the water and the other to drink it. mate is a tea, btw. pronounced mah-tey. so we went to two more specialists offices, which were both closed, and finally we just went to a little medical clinic. the doctor shined a flashlight in foo´s eye, which is very sensitive to light, and said he doesn´t think it is serious, but go to a specialist. bueno. so it´s friday afternoon and the only doctor working in the whole city that day says go see someone else. saturday foo woke up with a whole lot of gross greenish goo on her eyeball. and a lot of pain opening and closing her eye.
this conversation happened:
katie: does your eye hurt?
foo: no. it just feels like something is stabbing my eyeball all the time.
right...
so that day was rough. sunday she woke up with more goo. and more pain.
today, monday, we went to the specialist. who looked at her eyeball and dilated it and looked at it again. and said basically there´s nothing in it, it´s just scraped. and he gave her a prescription for eyedrops. so we´ll see how that goes.

i´m thinking we´ll move on from this farm this week. maybe stay in hostels for a couple weeks and rest, then foo´s parents are coming.
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that´s all the interesting news for now....

this week...

hey all! this is going to be a bit quick...
three pigs had babies this week! and several have gotten squashed by the giant mama pigs. the word in spanish for squashed is aplastar. haha. several chanchitos aplastados. tragic.
i´m pretty tired. and dirty. we work 7 days a week. and it´s all kind of the bitch work of farming. like if i had my own farm, i would take a minute to make lunch, clean the house, relax a bit. but being the help, we pull a lot of weeds and dig a lot of tiny canals to water plants. i think we might take a couple weeks in mendoza to relax. and cook our own food. i eat a lot lot lot of white bread here. foo seems to be doing a little better. she´s learning tons of spanish but i don´t think she feels like it yet. a couple kids from the US came to the farm for 4 days this week. it was good to have some more communication in english. also, the internet is unbelievably slow. tomorrow we´re making chinese pancakes for the family for dinner. it´s nice to be able to cook even if it´s only once every two weeks. also, luis, the owner of the farm, likes to talk about foo (in spanish, of course) and the other day he said she was like a ´tanque de agua´. they seem to think that being asian gives her special harmony and balance. for real. she´s as tranquila as the water in a water tank.

farming and such.

we´re still at la stala. not sure how long we´ll stay. i´m not sure this place is awesome for nancy´s soul. so we´re talking maybe language school for a month or so, maybe a farm where they speak english. i can imagine being around 6 people who speak a different language that you don´t know would be a bit difficult.
anyway, more about la stala: everyday we wake up at about 9. it´s really hot in the day time and really sunny. and at night it gets super cold. so at 9 we get dressed, go inside and eat breakfast and have tea. then we go out back and feed the pigs and the chickens and sometimes the rabbits. there are 4 pigs that are separated from the rest because they´re pregnant. and 2 of them are going to have baby pigs any day now. i can´t wait! the family sells the baby pigs for christmas. i think that baby pig is a traditional christmas food here. so they´re going to have like 50 pigs to sell. oh my. so after pig feeding we get the eggs from the chickens. and we start the work day. we pull weeds, cut oregano to dry it, put compost on the garden. last week we dug sort of trenches to water the grape vines. we did a pretty good job i think. it doesn´t rain too much here so the watering system involves one giant canal which is 300 meters away. you have to go there, block it off a little so the water is redirected through several people´s property down a little man-made canal and then directed to different parts of the farm, depending on where you want to water. then it goes down between each row of plants. and everything is muddy for three days.

we eat well. a lot of food. and at this point, i feel like i´m physically active enough that my food is just fuel. there is no recreational eating. i´m still not used to the dinner at 11 pm. i still would prefer a 7pm dinner and bed at 10 or 11.

i´m loving this place. tired, but loving it. i think the family is a little more comfortable with us now, because they bicker in front of us. kind of often. and they all have this like sing-songy whiney voice. except the mom. that can get annoying.

so today when we get back to the farm we´re going to have lunch then cut oregano and tie the grape vines to the fence-support thing above the vines. and then maybe weed some more and cut off chamomile flowers to dry for tea.

oh my goodness! this happened today: we use the dry bathroom, which is a composting toilet, which is outside. it´s like a little room with a toilet seat and a bucket underneath to catch all the business. so one scoop of sawdust gets put on pee and two scoops on poo. and you can pull the bucket out when it´s full and put it on the compost. so i did my business and i was scooping sawdust into the bucket and then appeared a dog head in the toilet! dulce is the dog´s name. she stuck her head in from outside the bathroom. oh my.

not sure when we´re heading out from here. or to where. i could stay a while but i think foo´s soul could use a change. so we´ll see.

i guess that´s it. i could use a bit more salad and fresh veggies and fruits in my diet. we eat tons and tons of bread. delicious, but a huge change from how í´ve eaten for the past year.

i´m looking extra forward to having my own farm and making it run how i want. seeing what works, growing my own foods.

but i think i´m learning more spanish, which is good. i´m thinking that to not overwhelm ourselves with learning yet another language, we´ll have a stop over in an english-speaking country for a bit after this. but who knows. at this point there are no definite plans at all......

much love,
katie

La Stala

We made it (again)! we had a 6 or 7 hour bus ride from santiago, chile to mendoza, argentina. we had to go up through the mountains and it was snowing. so when we passed through customs, which was like a sort of a giant garage/tunnel there was a giant hole in the roof and it was snowing inside onto all of us. we got to mendoza and searched through the bus station and found a place that had a bus leaving exactly at that moment. so we bought tickets and ran to the bus, which took an hour or maybe more. but this bus had random stops on the side of the highway so we didn´t know when to get out because it´s not like there were big friendly signs. there was a huge family next to us slash behind us that was playing this song on their cell phone over and over the whole time. the words i understood were ¨eres mi chica sexy¨, which means you are my sexy girl. so an hour of that and we finally made it to tunuyan. where we were let off. on the side of the road. with no idea at all where to go. we knew we were supposed to take a taxi to the house. so we found what looked like it might be sort of the main road and walked up it. everyone- no joke- every single person that we passed stared. and stared hard. because turns out the asians don´t come here too often. so two foreigners with huge backpacks, one of them asian, walking around looking lost. finally we found a taxi man. and he drove us there. on the way i told him what we were here for and he asked me about mormons from utah. i think a lot of missionaries come here.
anyway, so we made it to the farm. there were some french kids there wwoofing too. but the family agostini has 4 kids, who are by far the best kids in the world. they are all super nice and behave and help. antonella is 14 and helps nance and i learn spanish. maurizio is 13. he is really funny and reminds me of craigy a little. nicolas is 16, doesn´t talk as much but i get the vibe that he´s a really good kid. and sofia is 18. she´s nice but i don´t know too much about her. laura is the mom and she is a teacher and luis is the dad. he works on the farm all day.
so far nance and i have cleared ground and built sort of a trench for grape vines, weeded a whole lot, fed pigs a lot of times, milked a cow, fed chickens, cleaned up rabbit poo, and i got stung on my booty crack by a wasp. no joke. not quite sure how it got there, because i was wearing pants. anyway... and we eat with the family. the food is delicious. laura is a supermom. she works, comes home, cooks lunch, works on the farm, cooks the afternoon meal, washes clothes, cooks dinner. she does everything. also, we eat four times a day: breakfast at 9, then lunch at 2 or 3, which lasts about 2 hours. then mediatarde, which is at 7 or so. then dinner at 11. then bed. and everything over again.
there´s so much more but i don´t have time. so anyway, i´m having lots of fun. learning lots. more later, dearest dear loves....