Happy Land

I sat down hoping to share with you.  But I'd prefer to share not my words, but my cookies.  All the gingersnaps our friend and once-student Natalie (who is staying with us for a month or so) and the girls made, the vegan chocolate cake (safely covered on the back porch) for a dear friend and precious colleague of Martin's, and the banana bread waiting in its foil for breakfast tomorrow.  These are my offerings for today.  I have little to offer in the way of words but I have a lot to feed you.

So I'll clip another little e-mail that my mother wrote to Merry and let that suffice for this evening. 

Grandaddy and I went to Happy Land this weekend.  We went for a walk and ended up there…lot’s of slimy mossy green water with boats with duck heads that you pedal to make it go.  It was lots of fun; it cost us about 30 cents to get in and another dollar to rent the boat.  There were funny statues that we will send you pictures of. 

Fancy a trip to Happy Land?  It will only cost you a mere thirty cents, which doesn't seem like anything to us--but from my quick research, is far too expensive for most Burmese families to afford.  If your daily wages are less than a dollar a day, Happy Land is not going to be on your agenda.  I did find a photo HERE.  Pretty crazy.

 Martin and his father worked on our 3/4 acre today, mowing and weed-whacking until they could barely walk straight.  But this last bit from my mother's e-mail certainly puts things into perspective:

Today I went a lovely long walk first thing in the morning, because it gets hot early in the day.  There were lots of people cutting grass…all with scythes, long knives, no lawn mowers here.  Can you imagine if your mom and dad had to cut your big yard that way?  And then there were women wearing bamboo hats who squatted down with smaller knives and went inch by inch pulling up each weed in the lawn.  They do that every day, all day long; they put kind of white paint on their faces so that the sun won’t turn their skin dark.  I carried an umbrella even though it wasn’t raining, to shade me from the sun.