Well it has been so busy the last few weeks. I think I have only had 1 day off since the middle of February! Time here is truly flying by and I feel that I am really becoming a part of this place!
It is so nice to walk up the hill to the girls school and have them yell out “Joana, Joana!” and come running up to me asking if they are having computer class today or what will I be teaching in PE. By the way the PE class is going great! On Fridays I have three classes. In the morning I have the first and second graders and then 3rd and 4th, and last are 5th and 6th. With each class it gets easier and easier to teach because I learn what went wrong with the 1st and 2nd graders and by the time the 5th and 6th graders arrive it is top notch!!!
Last week I had them in four different stations one doing jumping jacks another doing push ups another doing lunges and the last one on jump ropes. A sight to be seen!! Haha! I had about 45 kids in the last class and they were so excited for about the first ten minutes but then they started to sweat and were slowing down and I would jump in with each group and do their different exercises and when the two minute interval would come to the last 10 seconds they would do a count down in Spanish diez, nueve…dos, uno!!! And they would all start hooping and hollering!!!!!! And then I would have them go to the next one! They were so energized it was great! Their school teacher peeked her head in to see what in the world was going and then she joined in later for our Frisbee game. It was so funny she was running across the salon in her heels trying to beat another kid to get the Frisbee almost taking him out!
The teachers came up with some themes for the PE class and they asked that I work with the kids on direction and learning the left from the right foot and stuff like that. So last Friday I had two volunteers come with me and we had the children doing a gringa-fied version of the Hokey Pokey. I wish I had a picture of this. One great big circle of kids with three tall white people pointing their fingers in the air turning in the circle singing the Hokey Pokey in broken Spanish…pretty entertaining!
Other than that not too much is going on…really staying busy with school stuff and helping with volunteer projects…a lot of painting.
I had a nice evening a few days ago. Betty, one of the long term volunteers that lives in lives in a house that she built about 2 years ago and it sits right next door to the main volunteer house. She had us over for appetizers…which was so nice because I have not been in a home in about 2 months…and you don’t realize how much you would miss sitting on a couch or just seeing walls with paint on them instead of grey cinderblock. So it was so nice and refreshing and we made some guacamole (delicioso) and had some bruschetta type food and I just felt normal for a little while. We sat outside on her porch where she has all of these different plants and flowers growing up around her house and they were all individually beautiful and each one had a different color: vibrant fuchsia, soft mango, deep red…absolutely gorgeous! And we sat on chairs and chatted about different things and Betty who has lived all over the world told us a little bit about when she lived in Egypt and how spectacular the pyramids were and it didn’t matter how many times she had seen them every time was just as amazing and breath taking.
After weeks and weeks of constant moving around with the short term volunteers that were coming and going… it was nice to just sit back and watch the sunset. I have to say this is such a special time for me in my life…especially because I have great people to share it with and am in such a beautiful place. The sunset that night was majestic. The sky was a beautiful clear blue and there were full white puffy clouds scattered through the sky and the front of the mountains were a cool gray color and as the sun dipped behind the them and you could actually see the individual sun rays shooting through the sky and breaking around the clouds. I felt like I was right there with the sun. And the color of the sunset was gorgeous it was pink and yellow and bright and as it fell more and more behind the mountains it became more of that soft mango color. Mmmmm just beautiful!
That is all I have for now, busy, busy,busy…but thoroughly enjoying every minute! I am off to Costa Rica for two weeks on Wednesday can’t wait to see some of my family!
Hope all is well!
Pura Vida!
Joana
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Sunday, March 1, 2009
A little bit of fire and a whole lot o baking
It has been a whirlwind of a week…
Last Sunday we had a brush fire…there is a fire pit about 200 feet from our house and the wind was really strong that day and someone had lit a fire. The wind picked up a piece of trash and carried it about 50 feet from our house. I have never seen anything like it. I was up at the Mom’s project at the time which is another 200 feet past the burn pile. At that time we had a men’s group visiting the Mission and we were all up at the Mom’s project when one of them noticed all of the smoke that was billowing toward our house. All of a sudden they all took off and they grabbed shovels and rakes and ran to the burn pile to put the fire out. The rest of us went to the pila where we wash our clothes and started filling up buckets of water. There was this tree not too far from the house and the base of it was consumed in flames. The grass was all black and the smoke was unbearable. It was hard to breath. The guys were yelling into the house…”Fire, fire…this is for real…it is not a joke” So they all came running out and in a few short moments they had extinguished the fire!!! Thank goodness they were there…because I don’t know what I would have done.
That was totally amazing…I have never really witnessed a fire being out of control…and it was scary how much power it had. Thankfully we were in the right place at the right time!
On Monday we went up to the Mom’s project and made fried cakes and strawberry syrup as little desserts for the families for Fat Tuesday come a day early! Since I have been here I have had plenty of time hanging out with the kids but I did not know the moms very well so it was nice to spend time with them and get to know them a little better. We brought the ingredients for the cakes and went into their communal kitchen and the mom’s and the volunteers put the dough together and they showed us how to roll the dough out into individual tortillas. It was great watching them work together and having them teach us tricks of the trade.
As we were all in the kitchen rolling out the dough the women were having fun laughing and playing little jokes on each other. It was definitely a room full of joy and happiness. Which I am sure for some of those mothers is a sigh of relief just to enjoy the day without any worries. It was great to see the kids come in and out of the house and you couldn’t tell which child belonged to which mom…they all help each other out and are all friendly with one another. It was great to see the community in which they live and how positive and uplifting it is.
After making the tortillas we melted about 1 ½ lbs of fat and fried the tortillas in the fat…right then and there I swore off all fried foods. Until about 15 minutes later when they insisted that we try one because we had helped cook…and I didn’t want to be rude…and man alive they were delicioso!
Fat Tuesday. So for Fat Tuesday we decided that it would be a great idea for each long term volunteer to make a special dessert. We each took turns baking in the kitchen and after dinner we made a plate for each person in our group along with each person from the Men’s group and we had a chocolate cookie with peanut butter chips, toffee bar, peanut butter chocolate bars, and I make a chocolate cake with butter cream frosting (from scratch…I might add…and it was very tasty!) and we all dove in and enjoyed every last bite. And now I know why it is they have Fat Tuesday right before Lent…get rid of any desire to want to gorge yourself ever again…I felt so ill after my sugar overdose…I don’t know if I have ever has so many choclately, sugary, deliciousness in such a short period of time and about 15 minutes after licking my plate clean I thought I was going to die! Hahaha!
Other than that not too much is going on. We dropped the Men’s group off at the airport on Saturday and then picked up 3 university groups (Catholic University, Villanova, and Vanderbilt). Don’t worry team…I will make sure they all have custom vv apparel.
I will be leading Catholic University and will be in charge of my first work project. So wish me luck…we will be painting the a bunch of houses in the Mom’s project. Next week I will take pics of the different sites so you have an idea of what I am talking about!
I just uploaded my pictures from the past few weeks so they are a bit jumbled. There are pics from my computer class, some from a retreat center we went to…this has all of the pics of the arches, the fire, some churches, waterfall, and the beach pictures are from Tela.
I hope you are all doing well! I miss you!
Joan
Last Sunday we had a brush fire…there is a fire pit about 200 feet from our house and the wind was really strong that day and someone had lit a fire. The wind picked up a piece of trash and carried it about 50 feet from our house. I have never seen anything like it. I was up at the Mom’s project at the time which is another 200 feet past the burn pile. At that time we had a men’s group visiting the Mission and we were all up at the Mom’s project when one of them noticed all of the smoke that was billowing toward our house. All of a sudden they all took off and they grabbed shovels and rakes and ran to the burn pile to put the fire out. The rest of us went to the pila where we wash our clothes and started filling up buckets of water. There was this tree not too far from the house and the base of it was consumed in flames. The grass was all black and the smoke was unbearable. It was hard to breath. The guys were yelling into the house…”Fire, fire…this is for real…it is not a joke” So they all came running out and in a few short moments they had extinguished the fire!!! Thank goodness they were there…because I don’t know what I would have done.
That was totally amazing…I have never really witnessed a fire being out of control…and it was scary how much power it had. Thankfully we were in the right place at the right time!
On Monday we went up to the Mom’s project and made fried cakes and strawberry syrup as little desserts for the families for Fat Tuesday come a day early! Since I have been here I have had plenty of time hanging out with the kids but I did not know the moms very well so it was nice to spend time with them and get to know them a little better. We brought the ingredients for the cakes and went into their communal kitchen and the mom’s and the volunteers put the dough together and they showed us how to roll the dough out into individual tortillas. It was great watching them work together and having them teach us tricks of the trade.
As we were all in the kitchen rolling out the dough the women were having fun laughing and playing little jokes on each other. It was definitely a room full of joy and happiness. Which I am sure for some of those mothers is a sigh of relief just to enjoy the day without any worries. It was great to see the kids come in and out of the house and you couldn’t tell which child belonged to which mom…they all help each other out and are all friendly with one another. It was great to see the community in which they live and how positive and uplifting it is.
After making the tortillas we melted about 1 ½ lbs of fat and fried the tortillas in the fat…right then and there I swore off all fried foods. Until about 15 minutes later when they insisted that we try one because we had helped cook…and I didn’t want to be rude…and man alive they were delicioso!
Fat Tuesday. So for Fat Tuesday we decided that it would be a great idea for each long term volunteer to make a special dessert. We each took turns baking in the kitchen and after dinner we made a plate for each person in our group along with each person from the Men’s group and we had a chocolate cookie with peanut butter chips, toffee bar, peanut butter chocolate bars, and I make a chocolate cake with butter cream frosting (from scratch…I might add…and it was very tasty!) and we all dove in and enjoyed every last bite. And now I know why it is they have Fat Tuesday right before Lent…get rid of any desire to want to gorge yourself ever again…I felt so ill after my sugar overdose…I don’t know if I have ever has so many choclately, sugary, deliciousness in such a short period of time and about 15 minutes after licking my plate clean I thought I was going to die! Hahaha!
Other than that not too much is going on. We dropped the Men’s group off at the airport on Saturday and then picked up 3 university groups (Catholic University, Villanova, and Vanderbilt). Don’t worry team…I will make sure they all have custom vv apparel.
I will be leading Catholic University and will be in charge of my first work project. So wish me luck…we will be painting the a bunch of houses in the Mom’s project. Next week I will take pics of the different sites so you have an idea of what I am talking about!
I just uploaded my pictures from the past few weeks so they are a bit jumbled. There are pics from my computer class, some from a retreat center we went to…this has all of the pics of the arches, the fire, some churches, waterfall, and the beach pictures are from Tela.
I hope you are all doing well! I miss you!
Joan
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
