My neighbor is named Debbie Wu, a nickname. She is a southern belle of immense warmth and charm. She and her husband are retired medical personnel and they go to disaster areas overseas several times a year to serve Doctors Without Borders. They have been robbed at gunpoint and exposed to extremely contagious diseases, and have saved many many lives. She gave me two rules when traveling.
1) If you see a bathroom, use it.
This sounds so very simple and obvious, but I will tell you it is not instinctive. Today we all used the bathroom before leaving at 7:20. We had all bolted a cup of coffee and some water, and the first one us, whom I will call “SJ”, had to go to the bathroom in about 30 minutes. We stopped. Then we stopped for coffee all four and “SJ” and “DB” used the restroom but two I will call “KH” and “JC” did not. Then “KH” and “JC” had to go, so they stopped at a campground and asked to use the restroom. Then “SJ” had to fix her little toe condom that is preventing further blisters. Then “DB” had to put on her sun hat and sunglasses. So we had a group discussion about when stopping, do all your business at once. Sounds so easy.
Rule # 2 from Debbie Wu: Always keep a couple of wads of TP in your pocket. Yesterday someone had an emergency because there was no TP in her stall. I was able to say smugly, “Hmmm. I had no problem because I always carry extra.” Then, even better, today at the fort I walked past a little boy walking with his clean tidy father and the boy suddenly got a bloody nose. The dad was trying to catch the blood in his hands and was looking wildly around for a remedy. Like McGiver or Q on James Bond, I whipped out the absolute perfect tool for the situation—a wad of TP from my pocket. I handed it off to the dad, blessing Debbie Wu for the great advice. “KH” took this advice so seriously that she kept a long trail of TP hanging out of the back of her pants, which “SJ” spotted and was laughing too hard to take a picture.
My roommate thinks I should mention that I still can’t order food correctly, since I ended up with an entire bottle of red wine at lunch instead of a glass, which they happily corked up for me so I could carry it around in my backpack, along with a ziplock full of bread from the bread basket.
I am now just going to give you some clowning-around pictures, because we are having a lot of goofy times.
This is Steph and I dressed for our Deputy duties when Judy was the Leader of the day.
In this picture I thought I was going to look like a surgeon scrubbed for blister surgery on Stephanie’s toe, but in reality look like an Arab sheik describing zucchini.
The Portuguese personal trainer teaches me a few moves.
Judy is caught eating pastry. The other day I ate nine pieces of bread from breakfast to dinner.
Stephanie, aboard the replica Pinta in Baiona, announces her arrival in and “ discovery” of America.
