Sunday, January 23, 2011

Friday



I ignored my alarm this morning, and slept until 7:30, when I’m usually finishing breakfast. I rushed through the morning routine, Daniel picked me up, and we got to class on time. I learned three verb forms today, all before the break. Since Fridays are community lunches at El Nahual, and I didn’t have anything to prepare, I went with my teacher, Stephen the coordinator, and Maggie to the market during break and into class time. We took a bus to Democracia, the massive market, and spent some time there buying everything we needed. The markets here are amazing, tons of people sitting on the street selling huge amounts of anything you could want to buy. Maggie and Daniel were making a fruit salad, and she bought ten starfruits for about sixty cents. In the states, one starfruit goes for at least a buck fifty, probably much more. We got back, I took a little exam to see what I had retained, and began preparing lunch. All of the volunteers, the coordinators, and my teacher were in the kitchen together preparing lunch. The theme for lunch was Chinese food, but I elected to make Chinese guacamole, as it just doesn’t make sense to make Guatemalan food when in Guatemala. When we were finished preparing, we all ate at a long table. There was more than enough food to go around, and we all stuffed ourselves full.

After lunch, Daniel and I planned our lesson, and went into town to get some number worksheets printed out. We had the kids write the numbers from one to ten, which was very difficult for most of the kids. Some of them could count fine and could recognize the numbers, but others could not tell a four from a two. I worked with one girl for a while so that she could at least recognize the numbers from one to five. When the kids lost interest in writing numbers, we went to the street, wrote the numbers on the road, and had them run to the number we called. This proved exceedingly difficult, as the kids who were interested in playing really did not know their numbers. After playing this for a few minutes, it was break time. For thirty minutes after break, we played games on the floor, until it was time for the surprise. We brought the kids back out to lawn, and had two piñatas for the kids, to celebrate my birthday, a few days late. We let the little ones do the first piñata, and the bigger kids do the second. It was a blast. The piñatas were reinforced with wire, and kept their integrity through many blows. Just as the second piñata was going to break, I took the bat and did it in. Watching all the kids dive at the candy was priceless.

After school, Daniel and I went to Maggie’s. I didn’t stay long, and went to the internet café. I got distracted from what I needed to do there, which was buy plane tickets, and I went home. I had every intention of going back after dinner, but during dinner I let it be known that I can make many strange noises, and spent the rest of the evening juggling and making noises with my family.

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