The cat's got your tongue?

As things keep happening, it is all beginning to seem more normal. Here’s my yesterday:

Breakfast at 7:30 is a peanut butter and banana sandwich which I eat on our patio and the morning heat is already making me pit out my shirt- It will be a good day; freakishly hot and uncomfortable, but good.

The truck is in use to bring my housemate, Tiffany to the airport because she is leaving today after two years of working with Etta Projects. Her end is my just beginning.

I settle for a moto ride to the Centro through busy, law-less traffic and active market streets. We touch the bumpers of a few cars and I lean forward to tell the moto driver that I like the life I have and frankly, I’d like to keep it today. He laughs and I think that means we have reached an understanding.

I am in it-exposed to the elements and the smells. Not necessarily good smells, but smells of garbage cluttering the street, dry dirt and exhaust. As we pass other motos within an arms length of me, I realize that young drivers have faster reaction time. No women drive, they are chauffeured and I appear to be the only one with my legs on opposite sides. Somehow the other women carry two kids and a large bag of food on the back and can still manage to ride side saddle. Oddly, they also don’t look mildly terrified zooming through traffic like me.

I love to see the market in the morning with sacks heeping-full of colorful fruit, grains, vegetables prepared for selling. There are some old man juice vendors looking to sell their fresh squeezed carrot juice or orange juice and they push their carts through horn-honking, wild traffic. When we get out of the town center and market the roads become sand and my sweaty hand holds a little tighter as we bump over the unevenness of these byways, over the railroad tracks, past a school where little kids try to scale the fence and houses with long lines of laundry hanging to dry. I think I mention the laundry because it the clothing brings some color to this otherwise monochrome seen of sand and browns.

I enter the Comedor and say good morning to the women washing the tile floors, to the cooks, to the groundskeeper and walk to my classroom at the end of the row.

I enter and the students are already inside, they chime in unison to wish me good morning, tia Ella and the sound reverberates off the concrete floor. The morning group is full of smiles and we form a circle to being talking about our first and new theme for the week; Values. Flor and I lead a conversation about values and next put in place our new, Golden Rules of the classroom. From their little wooden chairs the kids are eager to raise their hands, but often times do not have an answer in mind. Hey, participation- I’ll take that. We do homework next, have a snack and end the day paint a picture of the values we learned at the beginning of class. The kids are eager to grab for their favorite color construction paper and get their paintbrush first, but once painting the kids were like angels sitting their quietly painting pictures of responsibility, respect, and love.

Flash-forward to the afternoon and ever-patient Ella becomes No longer optimistic Ella with mild heat stroke.

Since I arrived, the afternoon attendance has been sparse at best, but to my surprise more than THIRTY showed up for the afternoon class. Over thirty students of who some ten year olds and carry baby siblings to class, 3 year olds that come to be near the commotion, 12 year-olds that can’t read, 8 year-olds that read well and then there’s my dear friend/bolivian bandit ringleader Carlos and his merry little band that like to stick sharp things in their ears. I repress my visions of beginning a theme for the week and of trust circles and put any rememberence of my angelic morning students out of my head as I try to embrace my new role as a manager of 30 little Bolivian delinquents. I managed to release my tension periodically in the class by freaking out in English with an overly happy face and sweet tone of voice. It was effective, but perhaps made me flirt with the borders of insanity.

The chaos climaxed when the second punching match of the day occurred. And then I unleashed my rage.

Calling out for silence, I demanded that everyone listen and realize that there was to be no fighting in the classroom and that it was unacceptable behavior that it had gone on for to long, that this was to be the end of misbehaving and that above all else we must learn to treat others with respect— and then I stopped…and thought…wait am I giving a lecture in Spanish write now? Do I even speak Spanish?…oh God everyone is silent and starring at me....what do I say? Spanish failing…Can’t find a verb, aaahhh!!!! And that’s when the cat got my tongue.

Overall, I think the impromptu speech started off well and it had the right tone and body language to be effective. Articulate? No, but that’s not my style. Really, one loses the fervor and passion of primate or cave-man-like grunting if one speaks in real sentences all the time.

Around playtime I left with my morning partner-in-crime, Flor to visit with teachers about 8 students from our morning class. In my head I imagined the visits to go a little something like this: We would walk to the principals office and ask permission to converse with the teachers, we would sign a guest book and walk to find the teacher at which point the teacher would excuse him or herself from the classroom and we’d sit in chairs while over coffee and a cookie we’d talk about the areas of improvement for our students. Here was the real picture. At an outside school during what looked like recess for all grades we were followed by swarms of little kids who led us to the director. She shook our hand and pointed at the only building containing all the classrooms. As we asked to see the teacher the student we were talking about was pulled into the middle of the swarm as we discussed the child in front of all who wished to hear. Then, the swarm of children would lead us to the next classroom and would yell for the students’ name together. Not so private, but I guess it was effective.

After our walk back to the Centro Flor and I joined in on a group of younger students playing a game on the soccer field similar to Red Rover, but involving an angry mother hen and a lot of eggs. As the sun was setting, I waited for the others to finish-up their work and had a tumbling match with the driver of the red truck, Mariano and three little girls. It was all going well, until Mariano attempted a back flip and threw-out his back. He explained that at 40 he weighs more than he used to and for that reason couldn’t complete the dismount. I laughed even harder knowing that all the women have been teasing me that Mariano has a crush on me because I look like Barbie Doll (which is hilarious) and for that reason is more punctual since I’ve arrived in Montero to pick me up in mornings because he is eager to impress me. Nothing like a sweet back flip to make me weak in the knees.

After work, Mariano all of us home, I prepare large meal for myself and drank a glass of wine before passing out in my bed from a long and involved day.