Birthdays!

Sunday, 6/17:

Danny and I made pancakes for everyone this morning  - today is Oscar’s birthday, but it’s not Father’s Day here (here it’s March 19^th). This morning it was rainy and thundering (the thunder here is SO loud!), but later in the morning it stopped and was just cloudy and cooler than usual (though still warm enough for tank top and shorts).

In the afternoon, Danny and I took Oscar to the new place across from the beach house for lunch. I didn’t think to put on long pants or spray, since I thought we were going to eat somewhere else by the beach, and I ended up with soooo many sandfly bites – I counted just over 50 on one leg, and didn’t bother counting the other leg or arms. The food was pretty good though, and it’s a great location for the volunteers who live at the beach house – just across the tiny road!

After lunch I worked on my III, emails, writing, etc. and chatted with the VH1 volunteers when they got back.

Mely made dinner for all of us to celebrate Oscar’s birthday and the girls from VH1 came over for cake after dinner. After that, I went to VH1 to celebrate Brittani’s birthday with ice cream and watch “Bridesmaids.”

Monday, 6/18:

I woke up this morning with a sore throat and feeling a little more stuffed up :( It’s been raining all morning. I went with Helen to her 9am Reader’s Club since I said I would take that class at least until new volunteers arrive. Only one student, Kelvin, came (there are 3, but two of them live far away so don’t usually come when it’s raining). We played hangman with him the whole time – he is pretty behind in school, so figuring out what words it could be when a few letters are filled in is still challenging for him. Partway through, one of our afternoon students, Gustavo, came by – since he is an afternoon student at PEP, he should have been in school (as in regular school), so we asked him why he wasn’t, and he said he forgot there was school so didn’t want to go home to get his uniform and then get to school really late – so he ended up spending the rest of the class with us.

After class, I worked on my III at VH1 for a while. I worked on that and on writing for my blog til lunchtime. After lunch, I went back to VH1 and Nicol, Juliana, and Sahory came early and played there til it was almost time for class. For the 2pm class, we covered 10 “H” words – since H is silent in Spanish, a lot of the kids leave it out of some words, or add them where they shouldn’t be. The kids each wrote 10 sentences – one using each word, and then drew pictures for a few of their sentences.

For the 3pm class, Miranda and I combined the classes and started with a tripa (I wrote all the letters of the Spanish alphabet mixed up all over the board, and then one at a time, they come up and draw a line without touching any of the other lines, to the next letter). This time, when they drew a line, they had to come up with a word that starts with that letter. After that, we reviewed foods in English and then they each made a menu in English – I was really impressed by how much they know now!

After class, I worked on designing a poster for Alex’s campaign for Mayor.

Tues, 6/19:

Woke up with an even worse cold today. Had a good breakfast – scrambled eggs with veggies, beans, bread, avocado, and coffee and then went to class. Kelvin didn’t come this morning, but a brother and sister named Carlos and Nancy did. They each chose a book and took turns reading a page out loud.

After class, we watched “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” in the store.

 The kids came early to class, and were really huggy, but then when Jim came in and said Happy Birthday, they all swarmed and were REALLY huggy! They sung me happy birthday in English and then “Ya Queremos Pastel”. We reviewed the words from yesterday and how to spell each of them, and then each student wrote a story using at least 6 of the words, and illustrated it. In the 3pm class, we played the tripa like yesterday since there were several kids that weren’t here yesterday. Since the new kids were pretty wild, I took them one by one to read with me while the others worked on their drawings. I started a points system with them (a point for arriving on time, one for reading with me, etc, and get a prize when they reach 20) which seemed to help.

After class, I used the internet to check my email briefly and then started getting stuff ready for the barbeque. All of the volunteers came over a little after 7 and we had barbecued chicken and pork, beans, tortillas, fresh salsa, avocado, cheese, and of course, frescos (pop). The food was a big hit – we started with over 90 and ended up with just a few left, and pretty much everything else got eaten. When we had cake, they first sang in English, and then Spanish, and then the “ya queremos pastel” part…I got sung to a lot today!

Photos: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10101297854281518.2984316.10735354&type=3&l=cad0e398ab