Padres de Familia Bochinche!

This morning I presented myself to most all of the padres de familia at one of my Institutos. I worked on my presentation all afternoon and night while my little electronic baby slept quietly. I go to bed around 10:30 and one hour later the baby starts to cry and cries about 5 or 6 times more the rest of the night. There were two times when she wanted to bottle and drank for 15 mins so that I meant I had to have the bottle propped up that entire time. You know how difficult that is to do when you are half asleep? I got about 4 hours of sleep. Woke up 4:30 and continued to work on my presentation. I am horrible at presenting myself in front of large crowds in Spanish. My Spanish is actually getting worse, it seems. But during my presentation I saw a lot of mothers smiling and nodding their heads. I was waiting for an AMEN! but didn´t get one. Maybe next time. The teachers said that they really liked it so all is well although after almost any presentation I am immensely overcritical of myself. Who is to blame...GarBear or Otown? Or is that something I created myself? After the presentation of myself and the Bridge Model in my horrible Spanish, I handed out a questionnaire to the parents asking them about the quality of the education they thought their kids were receiving, what are their hopes and priorities for their children, etc? I can´t wait to get those back. Should be interesting. Also had to co-facilitate the introduction to the electronic baby proyect to some parents. It got intense quickly. ¨My son isn´t like that (thinking about sex); this will only open up his mind to doing these type of things.¨Or ¨This should be optional; all the other schools don´t make this an obligation.¨ Those were just a few comments. Some parents actually thought that the students (a male-female couple chosen based on proximity to each other) were going to have to stay the night together. Say whaaaat? Never that. So these two mothers were beginning to incite a parent riot (bochinche)...ok, not really but they were approaching it. Then this lady, mother of a really sweet and innocent boy, stands up (herself being very similar to her son, sweet and meek, says Ïm not anyone to be standing up here before you; and you´ll have to excuse me but do you love your children? (Parents nod their heads yes). Do you want whats good or bad for your children? (Parents mumble good). Well then I think that you sould seriously consider this proyect because it is a good thing for our children.¨That was the gist of it. But it came out of nowhere. This little lady. I wanted to say, ¨You go, girl.¨But I didn´t. All parents clapped for her though. It was great. Today was a good day. Update for Rab. I am no longer emo.

PD/PS

So most of you (peeps I talk to somewhat frequently) know that some lady got kidnapped in my town and is being held for ransom or could quite possibly be dead. So you know, hell yeah, Im scared but what am I doing about...? Im carrying around my little knife. Yup, I wont use it obviously unless they kidnapped me and tried to hurt me. Then itd be on. Its just like when I thought people were going to break into the house a few weeks ago and I slept with the cell phone in my hand for three nights. Because if damnit, anyone came in, I was going to blind them with the dim light of my Nokia and proceed to call the incompetent cops.

PD, I know this blog makes no sense.

Camila Aarin

I went to APROFAM today and adopted another electronic baby with the Hogar teacher. We tried getting an Afro-American girl but her battery wasnt charged so we settled on the white baby (which the Hogar teacher said would now look more like me). Her name is Camila Aarin. So far she seems like a whinner and isnt as cute as my last APROFAM baby although these are a new models. The students were going wild over the little creature and the boys are freaked out that they are also going to have to take care of the baby. Whose idea was this?, they asked. Muahahahaha. Ill try taking pictures of the little darling.

Drama Mama

Today was an insanely dramatic day at my little Instituto. I wake up this morning at about 5:30 contemplating if I am going to present the activity that I originally had planned for the kids (schools of the future, basically picking up garbage and building a model school out of it), and finally decide against it, concluding that I will do this later because I have other evaluation type things that I would rather have them do. Ok, not to bore you but I´ve been in the process of surveying the students on how they feel about their school (do they like it, what they like, don´t like, what they´d change, etc.). I´ve gotten some really great and interesting responses. Mainly, they really want a cancha and basketball court; they wish the school grounds were more ample (its really small); they aren´t too fond of the principal and Music teacher; and they wish it was cleaner (the litter largely their own doing). So those are some of their key concerns. This Monday I had this small dramatization on contamination and basically told them, you have to be the change that you want to see. You can´t just identify problems and expect them to go away or for someone else to take care of them for you. You yourself have to act. You´re young and uh, you´re young...so yea. Ok, I didn´t say that last part but I said that. And, now I´ve decided well, if you want to see change, then we are going to be the change. The working title of this project is Youth Empowerment (Empoderamiento Juvenil)...I stress, WORKING title. What I´m thinking is that I will have them first research organizations composed of mainly youth that are in Guatemala that are doing positive things for their community (make them begin to see that change by youth is possible). Then have them discuss what exactly is the problem with each of these issues that they identified in their questionnaires and what it is they want to change and how, then begin to research organizations or institutions that can help them with funds (for example for the basketball court) and then begin to take it from there. That´s what I have for now. This is the type of things that I think about from 5:30 to 7am and then from 12:30pm and on. Anyway, back to the drama. A student got kicked out of the class by the Language Arts teacher for disrupting the rest of the class. This student has anger management issues. He got extremely pissed that he was kicked out and started crying for hours, punching the walls, etc. It was bad. I tried talking to him and it seemed to help temporarily. I think he has some family problems because this was early on in the day and he hinted at being upset about something at home and later the secretary said that his father doesn´t speak very well of him. He eventually calmed down after a few hours, many teachers taking to him, some medicine. At the end of the day he came to apologize for his behavior and I told him I forgave him and just wanted him to be ok and not hurt himself. Poor kid. The teachers tried to dismiss it as just the way he is and he does it to get attention but I´m sorry, kids don´t act like that for no reason. There´s something behind it. Anyway, about 6 kids were late to school so they were made to sweep the halls (they prefer that to being in their first hour classes), a girl fainted and had to be rushed to the hospital, another boy went home sick and 3 boys got in trouble for throwing paper in class. Geez.

Response to Rab´s Bulls Blog

Ok, Rab get out of my head and into my pants. Why is it that I have been thinking about the Bulls in these past days as well? (Oops, I just spilled vanilla muffin all over my face). Seriously though...yesterday I went to this little restaurant to get some lunch (cheeseburger and cheese fries, if you care) and I was reading this magazine on the Olympics and they had this whole thing on Michael Jordan and the Dream Team. It took me back to those days when we were spazzy fanatics of the Bulls. I´ll never forget one of the Championship Finals that fell on my birthday and I made Mom and Dad get me a Bulls cake with the Bulls face and black, white and red sprinkles. I forget who they were going against that year but I remember literally crying and praying for the Bulls to win, pleading with God that if he just let them win for my birthday, then I would be good. Hilarious. Man, we loved those guys. But yes, then came stupid spin the bottle. Stupid hormones. We could be WNBA Stars (which reminds me, I´m supposed to be coaching the girls´bball team). Anyway, another thing that has made me think of the Bulls is this kid at one of my schools. His name is Micol or maybe its Mikol, either way, I´m a cheesy individual and call him Michael Jordan. I miss the Bulls.

Next point, I´m glad you guys had fun with the delicious La Chiquita chicken. Tell Roy to send me some...! Next time you see Sal, tell him I said hi and that the music he sent me was damn good. I´m jealous you all had such a good time. This coming week, I´m going to an archaelogical site with my 3o Basico kids and the Social Studies teacher. Later we are supposed to go to an orphanage and take some goods. I´m really looking forward to it. And in these next couple of days, I´m going to a camp ground with some other PCVs for a welcome party.

Badminton...the live stream wasn´t working. The Badminton player representing Guatemala is kinda fine, dawg...look him up. I think his name is Kevin Cordon or something like that. I was thinking about writing him and having him come meet our kids and show them (ME!) a couple tricks.

Phillip needs to quit being stupid and stay at the base and play with his new pet.