Good morning teacher! How are you?

Here are some new pictures. There are pictures of me, Ana and her parakeets, Loli and Edgardo (the kids who liked to snoop in my stuff) and Hermenia. Also there is the view from my window at sunrise and my new bed. They gave me a mattress when I first came, but it smelled nasty and I would rather sleep on the boards than a smelly mattress so I told them I was used to sleeping without a mattress and that someone else could use it, which I am sure they had taken it from someone else to give to me anyway.


I call this chicken "The Donald"
















New developments this week: I have moved into my next host family and I´m getting to know them now. More names to remember! It´s hard when they are Ngabe names like Ngwite, and I have a hard time remembering the weird spanish names too like Gumercindo, Vellanira, and Reicilia. Anyway, I am now living with Marieta´s family. She is a retired teacher but she is always gone working with some community group or another. She is very active in her community. I am actually living in her son´s house, Ngwite and Fatima, with their two small sons. I told Marieta that I had been having a lot of problems with the kids snooping in my stuff, so she has banned the kids from even entering my room. But last night I invited them in to play bingo because so far it´s been a little awkward.

I have had a couple embarrassing moments already. The first day I was there, I was taking a bath in the baño, which was built for much shorter women than me. As I was stripping down, the 16 year old grandson walked out of the latrine and got a pretty good view of my uppers, which was a little awkward. And then the other night I had drank two doses of ginger tea and also had eaten an actual recommended daily serving of fruits and vegetables. This is the only reason I can explain what followed early the next morning. About 5:00 I really really had to pee, and not just your ordinary have to pee. I mean, I was going to lose it fast. Again, I can only attribute it to the extraordinary cleansing power of the really strong ginger tea. So I got up to go outside, barely hobbling because if I had spread my legs at all it was going to come out. So I grope my way to the door because I didn´t have time to find my flashlight. I get to the door, which was brand new that night because the first few nights there was no door at all. Anyway, the door had swelled that night and was stuck shut, and there is no handle on it. I couldn´t get it open in my condition, and I began to panic. That is when IT happened. I promptly began to pee my pants, so I ran back into my room looking for my shower bucket but there wasn´t even much time for that. I peed all over the floor, and I am pretty sure that they were aware of it in the next room. So I spent the next little while cleaning up, all the while wondering how everything went so wrong.

Anyhow, needless to say that day didn´t start off well. And then I had to go and give a business administration training to a small store, which in itself has been a pain. This guy asked me for the training and set the date for Saturday August 15, which I wrote in my planner in front of him. Well, 8 days before this, I get wind that he says that the meeting is tomorrow, and I try to find him to tell him that I am not ready for tomorrow and that we had set the date for next week, but he is out working in his farm. So I left a message with his family hoping that communication would actually happen (ha ha), but it turns out that the next day they all still showed up and waited for me. So I went to talk to the guy again to see if he still wanted to have the meeting and he said yes, let´s have it on the 15th. I reminded him of it again later in the week, but when I showed up he hadn´t told anybody about it and was off at the farm again. Anyway, that´s how things work around here, you have to be pretty flexible with anything and everything because plans aren´t really plans and they always always change.

Anyways, other than multiple embarrassing moments and other general awkwardness about living with another family, things are going ok. Classes are going well, I think that people like them and I like teaching them. I´m kind of winging it because I really don´t know how to teach, so we´ll see how effective things are. I gave my first test on Wed. to one of my beginner classes, and they did well on memorizing vocabulary but have issues formulating sentences. So I will have to work on that I guess. Also I have students of many different language levels in the other class, which makes it hard because the more advanced students tend to overpower the people who have no idea what is going on. I try really hard to work with them too but I know sometimes they fall behind. The kids also like their class, but as more and more are coming it is harder to control the chaos. Kids are hard to deal with in general, but these kids weren´t exactly brought up to follow directions like stay in line, raise your hand, etc. So while they like the games, it is hard to get them to take their turns and work as a team. But they have learned in their regular classes how to say "Good morning teacher," so I hear that everywhere I go followed by a bunch of giggles once I have passed.

It is nice to actually eat fruits and vegetables more often. Oranges are ripening right now so I can have oranges whenever I want, and the other day Encarnaciona gave me a big bunch of little ripe bananas. The ripe bananas are a rarity because everyone eats them while they are green. I do like patacones, deep fried green bananas. Yum yum. But the other day I had to eat four chicken gizzards, which by the way are not the best part of the chicken. Nor are the feet. I´d rather skip on eating the protein at that point, but I don´t want to offend anybody. Also, when I go to visit people at their house they usually offer something to eat or drink, and I really don´t like it when they offer coffee because I don´t like it in the US and the coffee here is really crappy so it´s doubly bad. But again, I have to drink it. It´s kind of nice to get fed everywhere you go (brindis), I could probably survive on my brindis alone if I chose to do so. In spite of eating constantly I still haven´t gained my weight back but I am considerably more muscular.

I don´t have good cell phone service at my new location, and also I have to walk about a half hour to get to the school. Not a day goes by where I don´t walk at least 2 miles, which although it sounds inconvenient I really don´t mind it at all. I walk really fast too, so I tend to get to places in half the time of everyone else. I can´t stand to just stroll along like everyone here when I know I could have been there already.

I can´t wait to get my new house underway, today I am withdrawing the money to buy the materials. It may be more expensive than I can afford right now, but Ana and Orlando said that since it is going to be their house after I leave they will help out with paying for materials and labor, as well as arranging the deliveries and all that, which will be really nice. Anyway, I have more work to do so I will go now. Hope all is well back in the states, I think about you and your food all the time!