Double DUTCH

Tonight I realized how nice it is to walk after dark. Auntie Joe doesn’t usually like it when we walk to town in the pitch black, but it had been so hot today that we needed to take a cool walk.

    1. It is dark which means it is cool. Bearable walks are always nice!

        2. Everyone doesn’t stop you to talk every 2 seconds because it is either harder for them to see us (which generally doesn’t seem to work) or we can ignore them and blame it on not being able to see them. This sounds mean, but you need a break sometimes. It is nice to take a walk and not get stopped all the time. People here don’t understand the concept of just “taking a walk” and feel the need to know where you are going. We really weren’t going anywhere specific, we really WERE just walking.  

    3.  We can hardly see the people. They kind of just blend into the night. It’s a little scary sometimes and it makes me wonder how many of them get in car accidents when crossing the street at night. It’s nuts! We can’t see them, but they can ALL see us!

        4.  All the children are out. It’s awesome. There is no school at night, so they all come out to play and all the bars or “spots” are playing music, so the kids are all dancing along the streets to the BLARING music. I love it.

We got halfway down the hill and in front of a shop there were a bunch of kids skipping rope. Not the one person skip rope, the LONG skip rope. Petra saw me stop in my tracks and she could tell I wanted to join. I went back and watched for a couple minutes until they noticed me counting jumps to see if I could hop in with them. I LOVED JUMP ROPE in grade school. I could spend hours in the school parking lot at recess jumping in and out of the rope and playing different games with it. So much fun. The kids LOVED it that I was interested and right away invited me to play. I was in.

They turn the rope sooo fast! I really wish I had brought my camera because these kids are talented! They were impressed on how quickly I picked up on the timing of their game though, and I was soon in their game. They do this “3 fast hops, then you have to hit the floor and then jump back up again before the rope turns another time” thing. Definitely a good way to meet lots of the kids all at once!!! (and get a much needed workout in there too!)