The Battle of Marindia 2009

Our neighbors, who live here during the summer months, invited us to a water balloon fight. They provided us with the balloons for us to fill and told us to come over in an hour. Never let it be said that the Wally and Denise back down from a fight (at least with water balloons). Plus it was a nice hot day...

It turns out that the whole neighborhood is in on this thing. They had all brought their filled balloons and we met most of the people up and down the street. Most of them have been coming here for 30 years or more. It was a wonderfully friendly group (at least at the outset). We had a nice chat. Many of the neighbors spoke English and were pleased that we are making some progress in Spanish.

After a little glass of bubbly and a snack of flan, we were divided into teams and told to meet back at 5 pm for the showdown. It would be a contest with each team trying to get the other team's flag (T-shirts in this case) back to their side and when you have both flags together, you have won. The first picture shows a mound of dirt at the foot of our driveway(the neighbor called it "Wally's Mountain") that we had delivered today to fill out our garden areas. It was used to hold the flag of the South Team.

The catch is that you have a band of toilet paper tied around your wrist and if they other team takes it off, you are out until you go the the official bander (I just made that up) and get a new one, then you are back in the game.

Denise was on the winning team. Her team had the physical education teacher who made the game up- he was just very athletic. I did make one successful run with the opposing team's flag, but by then they had our flag and it just nullified the point.

However, on the other hand, aside from that pesky flag thing there was lots and lots and lots of water balloons thrown and burst- on everyone! Now I don't really think there was any point to the water balloons, because it didn't stop you from playing and it never deterred an effort to get the flag. I suspect it was just fun to hit people with water balloons- and we did that! In fact, cars driving down the street and unsuspecting pedestrians were shown no mercy.

After about 30 well played minutes on the field, we all dropped down exhausted (at least those of us in the 60+ age group) and went back to our respective homes. Getting to know our neighbors a little better was just icing on the cake. They do this every year. It was a little confusing, this time- but next year we'll be ready for them.