Days 113-114: The Last Monday and Tuesday

Yesterday it was pretty hard to get up in the morning. Still, I made it to the bus and had my morning reading time while waiting for school to start. There is a cement bench right on the other side of the street from the school and each morning I have a good hour and a half to read.

I helped out again in Seño Dora's classroom, the children are starting to know my name and recognize me outside of the classroom setting. Most of them are not too shy, but a couple of them still freeze up when I speak directly with them.

Emma came in and did a short bit of English work with them, colors and body parts again, and I worked on writing out homework in some exercise books. Since photocopies are very expensive and hard to come by in this little village, the teacher normally writes out all of the 'assignments' (which include repetitive symbol drawing and coloring) by hand in each of the 30 students' books. It is therefore very helpful to Dora when I can do that for her and leave her free to attend to the kids.

After school, I went to the Earth Lodge, per normal, and hung out chatting with the guests. Now that I type what happened yesterday, I realize how boring it must be to read about my days, since they are all essentially the same.

Today, the differences were: It was overcast today, sprinkling on and off. Also, I almost missed the bus this morning. I was tired this morning and a bit cold, so I was moving slowly. I literally was 5 feet from the stop when the bus came whizzing around the corner. Thank goodness I was not 30 seconds later.

I was put to my homework assigning work today. They are working with numbers (number 6 and 7 are the new ones), and so I wrote out an assignment for each number in every book. Pega cuadros de papel sobre el 6 y pega 6 semillas. Dora has them decorate each letter and glue the associated number of objects to the page or draw that number of pictures to help understand the concept of the number in addition to how it is written.

A dentist from England visited today briefly, she is staying at the Earth Lodge and handed out toothpaste and brushes in addition to a little talk about sugar intake. The ironic part of my class's conversation was that it was right after break, and everyone was still sucking on their recently purchased candies.

I had a giant chef salad at Earth Lodge this afternoon, it was a mountain of a salad and very yummy. I read for a bit (I am dominating my Spanish reading material) and ended up watching Benny and Joon with Emma in the little television room. It was raining on and off so I could not really sit outside in one of the lawn chairs and read.

Just had dinner with one other guest; beans and an egg with fruit and bread. We had a funny conversation when I mentioned that I realized I had gotten a light burn on my right arm, even though today was so overcast, and she said that honey was a good remedy. I think I will take her word for that, the burn is not extreme enough to warrant something that bizarre.

One negative aspect of the house here: there is a little dog that barks every time anyone enters the house, regardless of if the dog knows them or not. Loud, shrill barks that irritate me more than barking ever has. Maybe I am only used to hearing English barking and the Spanish accent is what makes it uncomfortable.

Only 5 days left on my gap year travels! So hard to believe.

Chao.