My time in San Félix: Domingo

Yesterday was a nice Sunday. I made a great breakfast of pancakes, sausage, and eggs in a basket (bread with a whole cut in the middle with an egg dropped in, dad used to make them all the time). That was a great start to the day. I walked down to the church mid-afternoon to watch the group's dance practice. It's great seeing them get better each week, and also recognizing and knowing some of the words to the songs, knowing who is in which dance, etc. Martin was there.

I just looked back at my last few posts and realized I haven't explained who he is yet. Martin is an older guy, mid sixties I believe, who is originally from Holland but moved to MN in the late 60s and is now a U.S. citizen. He lives in Morris. He came down a couple weeks ago with Father Greg, he's here for a month. He's been here three times before, and has hosted a few people from here when they came to Minnesota. Martin speaks Dutch, German, and English, but no Spanish. I can't imagine being here without being able to speak Spanish. He is staying with the family that he and his wife hosted in MN. Apparently the communication is going ok, lots of smiles and gesturing I guess. He's a really nice guy, it's been interesting talking to him. He's a jeweler, and is giving some classes here about making and repairing jewelry.

Anyway. Martin was there at the practice when I arrived so I joined him in watching. As they were finishing up, he mentioned that he was about to go to a baby shower for Vianney, a woman from the parish (she's great, really nice lady with three boys). He asked if I would come with since being there without understanding what is going on and not really being able to talk to anyone gets a bit old. He asked and literally 10 seconds later Vianney arrived to pick him up. I said sure why not. It ended up being a lot of fun. I only knew Vianney and her sons who were there, but everyone was very friendly and outgoing. (As usual here). I had never been to a baby shower before, anywhere, so I didn't really know what to expect. We played various games as a big group, and a few that not everyone was a part of but I of course got roped into playing. One of those was where four guys sat in chairs, blindfolded, and four women, also blindfolded, had to feed us baby food. It was interesting. A plus is that the baby food here is sweet and actually tastes good, people eat it as a snack. I had my camera in my pocket so Martin took a few pictures.

There was a boat on a trailer in the garage of the house, and one of the men was telling me about how he goes fishing in it above the dam. He invited me to come with him sometime which would be sweet, hopefully that works out. I explained ice fishing...the guys thought I was crazy. One of the guys and his wife ended up giving us a ride home, they were really great. They're pretty young, probably mid 20s, and just got married a year ago. We had talked a lot throughout the evening. We stopped at her parents house on the way home to drop off some cake, she had me come in to meet her parents which was nice. Daniel, the husband, and I exchanged phone numbers to figure out the fishing trip and I'm going to go to his mom's surprise 50th birthday party in a couple weeks. I'm glad I said yes to Martin about going to the baby shower, otherwise I never would have met these new friends.