Monday morning Hubs, Chepe, and I set off for Jose del Cruz Mena Elementary School. Suyen had warned us (the night before) that this school was particularly far away and that we should definitely take a Taxi—it would be a 15 or 20-minute cab ride she thought. Chepe had a different opinion. And so, we started walking… and we kept on walking. We walked for an hour… we started walking through the city, eventually made our way through the countryside where paved roads turned into dirt roads, houses started to disappear, and we got closer and closer to the volcano. Usually the volcano seems far away but suddenly it felt like we were close enough to touch it. Hubs joked that maybe the school was on the other side of the volcano. We eventually reached a school. It wasn’t the one we were looking for, but we would have taught a gym class there without a second’s hesitation. However, the school was shut down… who knows how long it had been out of commission. And so, we turned around and headed home. We’d try again later in the week. At least it made for a good story.
We spent the rest of Monday working hard on the office. We don’t want to give too much away, and are anxious to surprise Mary and Ann next week, but there was a lot of building, painting, and organizing going on. Yelba was biking by as we were working, so she stopped by and helped for a while. It was a pretty great scene—everyone busy and focused on his/her specific task, music on in the background, and a general feeling of accomplishment and optimism in the air. We then did our weekly grocery shopping which has definitely become a highlight of our Mondays. We hit all our spots—Market with Chepe, Pali (supermarket right next to the market with great prices), and then our splurge supermarket, Colonial. So we are stocked up for the week with all the basics and even a few treats.
Tuesday was another productive day. We held practices at Callejas (the field at the end of our street) for the neighborhood kids, and got a bit more done at the office. We’ve also just been spending some time bouncing ideas around about camp that kicks off in a couple of weeks, and are continuing to create a curriculum for Wednesday workshops. As always, we are really excited about tonight and Hubs will give you the details in her blog… hopefully it will be as successful as the last few. Not too much new to report on. Unfortunately, as Becky said, we are winding down while simultaneously gearing up for the last few weeks, so we’re in a bit of a transition period.
This morning we had much better luck at school! We ended up teaching 3 different groups of 4th, 5th, and 6th grade girls… probably around 40 in each group. They were all full of energy and had a competitive spirit about them. This particular school is also very close to Multi-Estadio (where Saturday practices are held) so we are hopeful that a lot of them will come this Saturday. The school just had a great vibe about it—one of the teachers walked his students out and had them sing three or four different songs for us. All of the kids (boys and girls) sang each word with so much heart and soul that their veins were popping out of their necks and their smiles were so big that all of their teeth were showing. I kind of just wanted to sit down and listen to them sing the whole morning. We’ll be back in the afternoon for a second group of kids.
Just for some final entertainment… Hubs and I went to a Pilates class last night at Euro Café. (One of the cafes that we go to for internet and coffee..) We’ve seen signs up advertising free classes so we figured why not? We walked upstairs into the owner’s living room and joined the group. The group being: The owner of Euro Café, his wife (the Pilates instructor), Hubs, and me. We brought nothing with us, but fortunately for us, there were two extra mats for us to use. The class was SO HARD. Hubs and I started off strong, and we’re feeling overly confident, wondering what all the fuss about Pilates was. We spent the first 20 minutes of the class avoiding eye contact trying not to burst into laughter as we were both taking in how funny the entire situation actually was. But pretty soon we weren’t laughing, and our smiles turned into grimaces…our muscles were burning and hurting in places we didn’t know existed. I am embarrassed but I think I had to cheat on a few of the exercises because I literally couldn’t complete them. We’ll be back next Tuesday to try to redeem ourselves.
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