DAY 13 - Getting clean

With cow poo being a constant occupational hazard here, we’d been running out of clean clothes to wear, so today was laundry day. Judy drove us into Hilo to use the Laundromat, and guess who we immediately ran into there? Joy and Henry! We’d arranged with Joy to take us to the Volcano National Park on Monday so we discussed that entire plan again while she folded all her underwear into neat little piles. After we’d figured out how to use the machines and safely put our laundry in, Joy and Henry invited us to come with them and have lunch in some Mexican fast-food place, where I had a nice tofu taco and Henry somehow ate the largest meal I’ve ever seen grace a restaurant plate, even in America. They went to see a movie after that but we didn’t really feel like that so we went back to the laundry place to wait for Judy there.

Unfortunately, the view from the place we were sitting at was possibly the least picturesque part of Hilo so I only picked out these few elements in the distance to draw.

Through some misunderstanding, Jai Dev (whom we have taken to calling simply ‘the spouse’) was suddenly also in Hilo so we got a ride back with him while Judy got some more groceries. During the drive he lectured us about the incredible amazingness of milk and got offended slightly when I said I didn’t believe that humans could fast without food OR water for several months, and took this as a reason for (even after we got home) coming into the kitchen several times during the evening and giving us more facts and snippets about these kinds of diet. At some point he appeared with a jar of white liquid asking whether we wanted to try any ‘sour milk’, allegedly some ('amazing!') by-product of making cottage cheese, but which tasted plain and simply like actual sour milk. (I was the only one polite enough to accept some, and boy did I regret it) During the evening, Kyle and Sarah had somehow been inspired to try their hand at drawing by creating portraits of each other (or more accurately, of their alter egos, Kyle Obama and great-auntie Sarah) the results of which can be seen here:

I'm so proud of you guys.