Not Your Average Work Week

What a week it has been. Just two weeks ago I was wishing for the school year to begin in a futile attempt to combat boredom and feel more productive. Oh what a naïve wish that was. I got what I was asking for and now I am inundated with work and responsibilities. Where do I even begin to explain what has been going on?

Let’s start at the beginning. Although Monday is the beginning of the work week, we do things a little bit different here and school didn’t actually start until Tuesday. No biggie, Monday was a fairly normal day of just playing around with the kids, hanging out with my family, and savoring the last day of vacation. On Tuesday I was up at an unprecedented 4:45 in the morning in order to leave the house by 5:30 to start my arduous trek to Piedras Largas. It wasn’t too bad; it was actually refreshing to be up so early and about half way into my walk I was stopped by one of the fathers who remembered me during matriculation. He offered me a ride and I kindly accepted in his vehicle of two or more wheels. Well, I being the American am a stickler for time and I arrived thanks to the generosity of the father 30 minutes early. Perfect, I brought a book just for this circumstance and I figured I would knock off a chapter. Well two chapters later the first kid starts showing up. Another chapter later the first teacher decides to grace me with her presence. It is now 7:40, they are FORTY minutes late. That is unheard of; I haven’t seen such blatant disregard for time since my stint in Spain. I guess some cultural cues have a way of transcending oceans. The kicker is that the delegado ordered that we not actually do any teaching on the first day. So… when the kids finally did arrive, only about 50% showing up, we just played a few dinamicas and sent them on their way around 11:30. I was dumbfounded, it was basically pointless for me to go, but also pretty vital that I showed up. I mean, I didn’t teach or do anything “productive” but I got to know the kids, show the teachers I was committed and that will be worth every minute in the future. Well the day was also saved on the way back when we all started walking and got lucky with a passing truck who gave us a lift to the bottom of town.

Alright so we are making our way through the week. It is already hump day and I am off to Jicaro II for a double session. I am not exactly thrilled about the day, I have to leave my house at 5:45 am to catch the 6am bus, and then sit through 3rd-4th grade in the morning and 5th-6th in the evening until about 5pm. I knew it was going to be a long day and I even prepared a Nica style lunch and dinner. I made rice and beans, tostones and fried two eggs for the rice. I was ready and got to school by 6:20. I was super early but again I had my IPod and book so I was ready. Well, the professors at Jicaro made Piedras Largas look early. They finally sauntered up around 7:40. Little did I know that they got permission from the delegado to start classes later since there was a bus a 7 am. Ok, small little hiccup, but today was the first day of classes and me being an observer/TA. I was excited and at first and paid diligent attention. Yet, it began to wane about an hour into class and I started moving around pretending to read what the kids were working on. I am not necessarily a bad person or teacher; I just had no interest in learning what 14yr old 3rd graders were learning. Yet, I snapped out of my funk and actually taught a language arts lesson about expanding on their writing, including the 5 W’s and I pulled a few kids aside for math attention later in the day. Alright, so I am moving along. Next is the afternoon block with professor Benedicto. He is my friend that I mentioned way back when and is super eager to work with me. He has his head on straight and has a lot of experience teaching and belongs at an American university. I vowed to help him get a scholarship to study in the States and class with him was fun. He has a much more informal approach, yet the kids respond very well to it. He seems to command their respect without ever having to change out of his jolly form. It is pretty amazing to watch and the time flew by until it was time to catch the afternoon bus.

Alright Thursday, the end of the work week for me. For those of you paying close attention it was only a three day work week; not too shabby. I know that I can’t complain about my life here. I mean technically I have a job, I am paid, I can live comfortably here on my $200/month and I work about 4 days a week. It could be worse; I could be in America dealing with the fiasco that you are all living in. Ok, so Thursday was a monumental day because my boss, Maria Antonia, was coming to visit. I decided to head to my final school, El Cobano, in the morning and get in an hour with the teacher before Maria Antonia came. It was pretty startling to see the difference in teaching styles between Jicaro and El Cobano. This teacher was straight from the 1950’s. She would just yell at the kids call on a random student to do a math problem and let the rest just sit around and twiddle their fingers. I was ecstatic that I was able to bounce out of there after about an hour. So my visit with my boss went with mixed reviews. She was happy to see I have been working on my water project and I have a youth group, but she couldn’t get over my lack of progress on my garden, abono, and vivero. I don’t know what she expects, I mean I have talked with all the volunteers and no one has these yet and the group before us laughed when we asked how their progress was going. I at least had a compost started about a week earlier and a shanty semillero on my porch. Yet, I got scrutinized for my abono not being deep enough, my semillero had inadequate soil and my rationale about water seemed inept. When my boss finally left I felt like I had accomplished nothing in my two months of service. It is amazing how one meeting can completely crush any momentum you have. However, I did not let it discourage me. I am a person that needs pressure and deadlines and I used her criticism to jump start my work. That day I re-dug my compost pit and I can proudly say that it is a full meter deep now. The dirt however sucked, it made digging the pond look like playing in sand. The dirt here is a hard clay that somehow sticks to your shovel and it is more efficient to use your hands than any equipment. I also had several of my seeds finally germinate.

I have been up to a couple other things this week, but I’ll let you read about it in my next post. It has just been too dramatic and different to include with my mundane life of teaching.

That is my life in a nutshell. I have tried to be good and respond to everyone’s emails. I love getting them so even if you have a minute just write a letter and say hi. Also, if you are ever in the generous mood and want to send me anything by good'ol fashioned mail, I love getting any type of hand written letters or pictures. Or if you are really bored I need cd mixes since my music is getting old.