Vomiting Coconuts

The family sick bed

Acclimating to a foreign country can be no fun! Yesterday, we all fell ill with a stomach illness. Maddie was the only one spared thanks to mother nature's super filters! Grace threw up three times during the night, which scared her half to death, since this was the first time she experienced vomiting. When Cosmo got home from English class, Matthew told him how sick we were. He jetted off in his car saying his was going to get something for us. I felt relieved, thinking that MOM or Pepto was on its way. Need-less-to-say, I was a bit bummed, when a knock came at our door 15 minutes later and Matthew was handed two large coconuts, freshly cut with straws coming out the top. The locals say that coconut milk helps with diarrhea and vomiting, but Grace didn't like the taste and neither do I for that matter--so we suffered! We are all zapped.

We were to travel to Bolivia today, this is kinda ironic since today is Brazil's independence day. Unfortunately, we are going to postpone the trip for a few days. I'm bummed because I was looking forward to seeing and meeting some Bolivian cattle women.

The weather here today has been surprisingly delightful. Like early September in Charlottesville--warm but not too humid, a chill to the air in the early morning and nice breeze in the late afternoon. Quite a surprise considering we are smack dab in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. The usual day starts out cool but by the time we are up from siesta (not sure what they call this period of the day down here), about 4pm, its pretty hot and still. I've heard parrots screeching but haven't seen any yet. They have cicada's down here that chirp at a high frequency, almost like the sound that high voltage power lines put out. They are about 3 times bigger than the cicada's in the states, about the size of a humming bird. Cosmo has a gift for catching them and then calming them down so much that they crawl up on this shoulder and hang out for a while. I've dubbed him the "cicada whisperer".