Toto, I don't think we're in Upstate NY anymore

Fear not! I am alive and well and this brief lapse in journal delight does not allude to an end in the beautiful blog madness. I indeed have a plethora of excuses with which to pardon my indolence. They include the fact that it was a crazy week, I have been sick and the internet connection has been dismal lately. Judge me not. I tried to start this post 2 Fridays ago, but I was in such a daze from the events of the day that I couldn’t even manage to tell my scintillating tale. This is how far I got:

“Today blew my mind a little bit. It’s Friday at the end of the long week, and I’m still trying to process just what took place. This is hindered by a foggy state owing to a lack of sufficient sleep. Last night was Natalia’s last night in San Mateo and we had to see her out in style with one last Foundation kitchen dance party”

Yea that’s it. But that day was truly jam-packed with mind-blowing occurences. As I said, it had been a late night before as we bid a fond farewell to our beloved fraulein Natalia and welcomed in our new friend and housemate, Brian. So as I entered bleary-eyed into my first class to be greeted by all of segundo bellowing at once that we had to cancel class so they could accompany Diego Ricardo(a fellow teacher), I was a bit confused. As it turns out Diego Ricardo’s great-grandmother had passed away and so the whole school was going to walk down with him to what was a sort of wake outside of the family’s house.  We processed down to the house in a not-so-solemn fashion and when we arrived a man was speaking over a megaphone system.  Each class then presented their gift of money that they had collected that morning and a representative from each said a few words.  Mostly kids were sitting around laughing and joking and eating snacks.  We weren’t sure exactly how to react or what we should be doing, so Kati and I sat with the students and drank some sweet juice nectar that Veronica generously gave to us.  After some time of awkward sipping, Eulalia pulled us over to the group of teachers who were discussing that we were going to leave because we had to attend a protest.  Uhhhhhh…..  I was unsure as to whether this was another part of the grieving process, but I soon found out that it was completely unrelated as we arrived to the centro to hear another man on a megaphone- this time speaking about an issue with the highway.  Apparently a family was refusing to knock down part of their house to make room for a new highway to come through- in response, a large group of mateanos, including all the students and Chat and I, marched up to the house to express their discontent.  We were there greeted by a strange and slightly frightening gathering of people- men with sledgehammers and other assorted weapons.  The most distressing thing was to see our favorite friendly shop-keeper, Pedro Pablo, standing there wielding a huge pike.  This is the guy who always greets me with a huge smile and asks about my “amores”….he’s still grinning wildly, but now with an enormous iron shaft in his hand.  After some more confused existence in this new location, I was very pleased to see that we were all preparing to leave and go back to the school.  I’m not sure how effective our presence there was, but I have since heard that part of the house DID in fact get knocked down that day and our students were blamed.  Methinks protest-attendance should not be a continued part of our curriculum.

We returned to the safety and comfort of the Foundation and had lunch and then proceeded with the rest of the “normal” day at Yinhatil Nab’en.  This probably means I went into the primero barn for 2 hours and  got crazy with them and acted really over-the-top and got exhuasted and loved it.  I had a lot of trouble with them at the beginning, but thanks to the divine intervention of Fer and a new behavior management plan, they have been really great lately.  We started a geography unit, so I split them up into 7 teams and each one chose a continent and now we have a Mundial competetion.  Let me tell you, those kids will do just about anything to get a little tally up for their team.  And they’re really great- I know almost all of their names now and fall in love with them a little more each day.  My heart almost burst the other day when Kati told me that they were looking at the map and could identify tons of countries and the continents.  They’re learning!!!

That night, to soothe our weary souls we engaged in a pleasant and calming game of…..putting puzzles together in the dark, while racing to be the first to finish.  Hmm, maybe that would have been fun if the other team had not taken the easiest puzzle in the world and given us a demonically-frustrating conglomeration of poorly-photographed flowers to put together.  They then proceeded to mercilessly trash-talk and degrade us as human-beings as we VALIANTLY struggled to reassemble this wretched melange of flora.  After enduring this terrible mistreatment as long as we could bear it, Chat and I retired from this extreme sport to rest up for the dawn journey to Tiactac the next morning.  Tiactac is a small aldea outside of San Mateo where a lot of the students come from.  Isabela, a very charming and sweet sexto student invited us all to come visit her there for the weekend, so on Friday night we prepared for the 7 am departure and subsequent 3 hour walk.  Details of this beautiful weekend will follow in the next installment.