A Day In Pino Dulce

Vanessa looking over her family's coffee as it dries in the yard.

First of all, Jorge is doing much better. He came home after a week in the hospital, after a surgery to remove coagulated blood from his head (or something like that, I didn't get a very medical explanation). Now he's recuperating at home with his family- one of his eyes is still partially swollen shut, and he still has a lot of aches and pains, but he gets his stitches out on Monday! Poco a poco (little by little).

Yesterday I had a fun day in Pino Dulce. Well actually, it didn't start out so fun- I had to wait almost an hour for a bus! The longest I normally wait is half an hour. Who knows what was going on. So I got to the school almost half an hour late, which of course was annoying to me. (Yet I'm sure that nobody else in this country cares, after all, it's more normal for people to be late than on time). BUT, the good thing was that as I walked into the school yard I saw a HUGE pile of sacks and bags full of the materials to make a compost pile- my project with the kids for the day. It's the only elementary school that I work in, and I really enjoy working with the younger kids. They're so enthusiastic and fun! I like working in middle schools too...but the kids can be a bit rebelde (rebelious) at times. Anyways, we ended up making the biggest compost pile that I've made yet, in record time. The teacher even took advantage of the fact that the boys had brought their machetes to school to give the lawn a trim!

They boys "mowing" the school lawn.

After finishing the compost pile I headed to a women's group meeting. I've been a little frustrated with the attendance to meetings with this group, and once again only five women showed up. But, the good news was that one of them was new- I vaccinated her chickens last week and invited her to come to the meeting. She may have been an hour late...but at least she showed up! We made cough syrup with eucalyptus leaves.

Next I went to the middle school. Last week we talked about different career options (I've become frustrated with the fact that all young people here seem to either want to be nurses, secretaries or teachers). I was pretty impressed with the kids- we came up with a list of about 50 different careers! Then yesterday we talked about goal setting and how to accomplish your goals. They were all quite cooperative, which is saying something when you've got a class of 34 kids. I was surprised, until I learned later from one of the girls that two weeks ago, when I got really mad because the kids kept talking and wouldn't listen to me, that after I left the teacher les hico bien reganado (gave them a good scolding)! He's a young teacher, I think he just graduated recently, and this is his first year at the school. I wasn't sure if I liked him that much, but now that he's standing up for me, he's my favorite!

By 4:30 it was time to head home. All in all a successful day!