Tag Archives: water

Foul Weather Friday

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There are a lot of tourists on Pont de las Minimes taking pictures of the quickly-rising river. I’m not one of them—I prefer to stay inside and on the top floor. This house on the river is interesting: the kitchen, living room, dining room, master bedroom with ensuite bathroom, and another bathroom are upstairs. Out of the front door and down some stairs is the entrance to the bedroom for Ethan and me, which has its own bathroom.

It also has several inches of water.

Earlier this morning, after schoolwork, Mom made us get our clothes and luggage off the floor in case it flooded. Within an hour, we were back downstairs and packing up all our things. I will be sleeping on the fold-out couch in the living room tonight; Ethan’s thinking the floor looks pretty good. (“I like my mattress hard.”) We went to the grocery store “between evacuations,” as Mom called it, and we bought tortillas, refrigerated pizzas, tomato sauce, pasta, oranges, asparagus, chicken, and some other food.

Mom called it “between evacuations” because after we came back, the property managers (Jackie and Ian) showed up on our doorstep. Dad helped them move the beds and some other pieces of furniture into the storage room. Two police men came by shortly thereafter and, through Jackie, said that there would probably be a siren, and, if we hear it, we are to get into the car with our stuff and drive to the Intermarche. So we packed up everything and stuck it in the car. Dad, Ethan, and I have our backpacks inside right now. If we’re still in the house by morning, we’re unpacking (except Ethan and I will stay upstairs).

In other news, I landed on Ethan’s Coventry Street in Monopoly. He had a hotel on it, and I had £5, plus properties. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to lose (a.k.a. be done with the game). I wasn’t quite done, though—Ethan and Mom had me stay as the banker until Ethan’s victory. Later, I played Scrabble: one game with Ethan and one with Mom. I beat both of them, only because of my awesome words ‘quay’ and ‘quilts’ and ‘adze’ and ‘zee.’ Together those earned me about 100 points.

Ciao!

Rafting the Rapids

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Well, because of my mother’s arm issue, we couldn’t do some things today, but we could do others. We woke up this morning at about 9-10 a.m. and did everything about breakfast that needed to be done. After that, Eryn and I played with the other kids and said goodbye to two of the rowdiest kids; Phillipe and Manuel. After they both had left with their mother in their car, Juan, his father, and his mother went out to get a new bicycle tire for someone’s bike. While they were gone, I observed Eryn and Paz making bracelets.

When Juan and family got back, he and I played some more before my parents decided that it was time to leave. We went out to a local ice cream shop and bought a kilo of ice cream ‘for the road.’ In all actuality, it wasn’t for the road, it was for the time when we got to the Rio Azul.

As we had gone that way before, it seemed that we got to the campground a lot sooner than last time. When we got down to the Rio, we went right on the path and up till there was a bench, where we ate the kilo of ice cream. From there, we walked a ways before sitting on a corner of the river next to some rapids. We waded and waited there, while throwing and skipping stones across the water and under hill and over hill. Eventually, we saw a little red kayak come down the river, and the rider steered her way through the rapids quickly and expertly. On the far bank, she pulled up and got out a camera to take pictures of what was to come.

What was to come was actually three large rubber rafts. They were filled on the sides with 6-12 paddlers each. Each of the three colorful crafts made it through the rapids fine, but the last one; a blue one, made it the best, going right through the middle without hitting either bank, like the other ones had. When it was over, I wanted to raft a river.

That’s all for now, Folks!