Well another week chambiando en good ol' TEOPISCA..... Hermana Arellano and I had grand plans of waking up at midnight on New Years to sit on our roof top deck and watch fireworks. But we slept through it all. Whatevs. What's funny is here there are wayyy more New Year's celebrations than Christmas ones!! Everyone was really friendly on New Year's day and said hi to us ..... well most of them were drunk but they were all friendly drunks!
So something.... interesting about Teopisca is that they have the biggest rats I have ever seen. These aren't your Tuxtla city rats... these are field rats that probably eat cats for breakfast. I guess with the hobbit hills comes hobbit sized rats. And there are literally so many of them that about once a day we find one plastered on the road. We've learned not to look down at our feet as we walk. Haha!
It's interesting because in Tapachula there were pancaked toads and here we have pancaked rats. I'll take a pancaked toad over a rat any day. My companion is soooo traumatized by Rats. It doesn't matter where we are.... if she sees a rat alive or dead she screams bloody murder. There have been like 3 times when a rat has come out during the middle of the lesson and I just start praying that my comp doesn't see it.... and she never has!! Miracles in Teopisca!!
But our biggest rat miracle occurred on New Year's day. We went out past the hills into the country looking for one of our street contacts. After about an hour of asking and looking we finally found her!!! We couldn't enter her yard because there were vicious dogs... so we ended up giving her a lesson standing outside of the gate. She was inside and her three boys were running around behind her. One was about 7 and the other two were 2 year old twins.
Right in the middle of the lesson, one of the toddlers comes running up holding a DEAD RAT the size of his head. I am not kidding you. It was the biggest dead rat I have ever seen. He was standing right behind his mom. Luckily, my comp was so focused on the lesson that she didn't see him. Suddenly, he drops the rat. Then the 7 year old finds a stick, and they start playing hockey with the dead rat. By some miracle, my comp didn't see it.
We left the lesson, and I immediately turn to my companion and said, "Did you not see that giant dead rat?"
She had not seen it... but as I started telling her
about it... she almost starting crying in the street!!! Haha! I've seen a lot
of miracles on my mission, but I never thought I would see rat miracles
until I came to Teopisca.
Hermana Hansen
