2nd day of teaching, completed,

Some updates

1) I have mosquito bites EVERYWHERE. EVERYWHERE. I AM DYINGGG. Sunday night, the night before our first day in the schools, I was being PLAGUED by mosquito bites and I had to get up at 5:45 to make breakfast and I was up past 1 tossing and turning and scratching myself in agony. If I scratch it hurts me, but if I don´t scratch the bites swell and ache all over and I´m compelled to scratch them, looking for some relief.

2) Um, I think I might be getting a crush on someone, which is stupid because it´s totally impossible and also I need to pay attention to the program and not get distracted. What that means is that I´m going to keep this to myself, all the time, and not even talk about it on my blog because I don´t want to acknowledge it, it´s so ridiculous. I think I´ll wait until I get home and see if I still want to talk about why I´m so ridiculous.

3) Last night, we played a game with a single hula hoop. All the volunteers stood around in a circle, Roberto played dance music, and we had to pass around the hula hoop but tossing it over our head and body or stepping through it and passing it to the next person, WITHOUT breaking the circle with our hands. So we continue doing that until the music stops, and the person stop with the hula hoop has to go into the middle, dance a bit, and try to... hula. So I was the first person to get caught. Um. I didn´t dance. You couldn´t make me dance in a circle if you put a gun to my head. But anyway, it was nice to see everyone dancing though. Especially if they were a guy. Especially if they were a mildly attractive guy.

Roberto was the guy in charge of the music, so he didn´t have a chance to dance- so at the end of the game, due to popular demand, we sort of forced him to dance (since apparently he really likes dancing and is... very good at it). And I don´t know much about dancing so I personally can´t dance without just looking very awkward, but Roberto has some sexy moves. Seriously. Like he could be a male stripper that´s how good he moves.

Anyway, Roberto being Roberto, he went up to Fabian dancing sexily and then he went over to Juan Luis, still dancing, and was like... offering him the hula hoop which was over his head, as in, GET IN THE HULA HOOP SO WE CAN DANCE TOGETHER.

HE IS SO RIDICULOUS. R is always doing things like this. What he does is he sits next to Juan Luis and introduces him as his new boyfriend, or like invites all the guys in the program to come to his room to learn about "amor" or he walks up to a guy from behind and they pretend to be intimate.

I don´t know if this is like a normal Latin American thing or Costa Rican thing or what. I assume it´s just R´s normal eccentricity, but the other guys are very cool with it and even think it´s very funny. Most American guys would not be that chill. Also, I don´t think he´d do this kind of stuff if he knew what was going on in my head.

4) After the hula hoop game last night, a small group of us sat around in a circle outside sipping tea and mate and telling horror stories, which R started with some stories about the dorm we were living in (which had been an U.S. embassy, then some kind of convent).

So that was last night.

5) Anyway, enough about fooling around. I should talk about more serious things.

So we went to our first school on Monday and returned to it Wednesday. It´s... really hard to teach in your second language. I mean, I´m not fluent so I have to think before I make sentences, and this is a pain to do when I´m multitasking like crazy, already trying to manage the kids, explain the material, think about the lessons, speak to the children, UNDERSTAND the children when they talk back to me... it takes time.

But I´ve already improved a tiny bit, I think- I measure my progress by how much I can understand the local volunteers. In the beginning it was incredibly difficult to understand people. Now, depending on the situation, I can USUALLY understand the general gist of what they´re saying. For example, in the beginning I understood maybe about .0001% of what Boanerges would say to me. I still have a lot of trouble understanding him, and so apparently do a lot of other people, if only because he talks so quickly and rapidly and in a low voice. But now, if I hang out with him or walk with him, I understand anywhere from 40% to 80%, depending on what he´s talking about and the background noise at the moment.

Oh! The other day I walked with him to the bank. When we entered, there was a man holding a... electronic beeping thing, I don´t know what it´s called, it´s one of those things you use to see if someone is armed or not. I can´t remember the word at the moment. But I sauntered in, cool as you please, and then I turn around and see Boa get checked.

Me: Why didn´t he check me?
B: Because you´re female.
Me: But I´m carrying a bag and you have nothing and no one knows what´s in my bag!
B: You´re still female.
Me: I could be dangerous. I should go over there and demand to get checked.

So B was laughing at me and I was pretending to be offended, which I was a little bit. Shouldn´t general security apply to everyone? Lethal craziness is not just a male trait, you know.

Kathy, I think you´d like B alot. At times he reminds me of Lee, at times he reminds me of Julia. He´s incredibly cool. The only problem is that we´d never be able to communicate with him, he speaks Spanish so rapidly and you can´t rely on me to translate, I just usually nod and smile and agree to anything.