Oh, the chivalry!

Last Saturday, we had our garden setup at La Escuela de Ruben Dario and had a fabulous turnout of about 40 fifth and sixth graders.  It was a little hectic for many reasons.  One, the other aspirantes and I don’t really have the Spanish skills to control a group of that size.  (Thankfully we had a current volunteer there to facilitate.)  Two, we didn’t know anyone’s names because we had only met the kids two days before.  Three, none of us have any gardening experience except for the 2 hour training we received three weeks ago and therefore had a difficult time passing along knowledge.  Let alone the fact that it wasn’t in English…  Four, we were in the midst of a hurricane. 

We got to the school at 8:00 AM and it poured on and off until 11:00 when we called it quits.  In those 3 hours, a few 11 year old boys totally kicked butt using machetes to tackle the 2 feet of grass we had to clear.  Nope, no John Deere here.  Another memorable aspect of that day was the 45 minute hike I went on with 15 Nica kids.  We were sent by the volunteer to fill large bags (sacos) with sand so we could later mix it with the soil.  Of course these kids knew where to look so off we went…. First, I was taken to a trail that was completely covered in about a foot of mud, probably half of it cow dung, and extremely downhill so I convinced the kids to find another spot.  Then, one student suggested we go to the place across the river.  I definitely nixed that decision as well after there was hesitation when I asked, “Will I be swimming?”.  Finally, “Yes, yes.  There’s another place” they said.  Perfect, I thought… I definitely just got out of getting completely covered in mud.  Well, no.  I was wrong.  Instead, they took me behind the school and up another path about 15 minutes away that was just as muddy, maybe more.  In the meantime, it started raining pretty hard but we were roughin’ it.  Girls’ flip flops were breaking and kids were falling all over the place.  As we walked, we started filling the sacos with the sand.  All was fun and dandy expect the sacos were VERY heavy so we heaved and pushed and used teamwork to hoist 30 pound bags on 10 year old boys’ backs who probably weighed double that.  I was carrying a pretty hefty bag on the way back to the school as we passed a group of boys playing soccer.  One boy, about 12 years old, stopped playing and ran right over to me and insisted on carrying my saco the 15 minutes back to school.  So, friends, chivalry is, in fact, not dead.

On a lighter note, we changed language facilitators this week and now my teacher is Rosibel and she’s fabulous.  I also am only in class with one of the other aspirantes so the two-on-one instruction is great.  I just know the next three weeks are going to bring miracles in my speaking ability.  There are some set backs here and there, like when I thought my family asked me about the oatmeal (“avena”) I eat in the morning but they actually were talking about going to a wake (“a vela”) that night.  Soo I told them, sure!  I’d love to have “a vela” in the morning.  I won’t mix up those words again.

On Wednesday, we gave our first of two life-skills presentations to our youth group.  We talked about healthy relationships and it went really well.  I need to give a shout out to 7^th and 8^th grade PEER for teaching me the icebreaker, Shuffle Your Buns.  We totally made a Spanish version and it was a huge hit.  Our group also finalized our idea for our recycled materials project and decided not to use wood to make our environmental awareness sign… for obvious reasons.  Instead we’re going to ask neighbors for old sacos and sew on bottle caps to write our message.  We’re also planning on braiding plastic bags to weave into the sacos for more décor.  Next meeting is Sunday so we’re hoping for some serious work.

Keep your fingers crossed that the next two storms coming don’t flood my house like the last one!  It literally was raining inside the house this past week.  A crack in the window send large amounts gushing in and there was, no kidding, pools of water coming underneath the front door.  The 8 buckets lined up in the living room did their best to catch the water coming in from the roof but weren’t that effective.  Tomorrow is Saturday and we’re supposed to get much more rain.  Hopefully it holds off until 3:00 because we’re working on our “garden” in the afternoon.  With any luck, the quotations around ‘garden’ will be gone by next post because it will actually be legitimate.