Ups and Downs

Ups and Downs

It amazes me how many ups and downs I can go through in very short periods of time.  Here are some examples.

+ I got invited to a very cute buffet that the seventh grade put on.  The teacher’s idea was to show kids what some restaurants are like and introduce the idea of serving yourself a portion of each item you want.

7th grade all dressed up

+ Watching the teacher explain that at restaurants you eat with forks and knives instead of just spoons was hilarious.

 - Something about watching the teacher explain first how to use a napkin holder and then how to use a napkin made me sad to realize how little these kids are aware of the rest of the world.

Learning to use a napkin dispenser

- The teacher had the kids get in a specifically ordered line and practice going through the buffet.  Later, when the kids were allowed to get seconds, they were so wrapped up in staying in the correct order and going through the line as they’d been instructed, that they ended up sitting in the reverse order in different seats.  I don’t quite think that’s how it works in restaurants.

+ They had salad in the buffet.

- Hardly anyone ate the salad. 

- I thought for the first time ever the quantity of food set out was appropriate (or maybe even light) for the amount of people.  And then a ridiculously enormous plate of rice showed up.

-/+ All of this took place just days after I’d returned from eating at fancy buffets at a luxury resort to celebrate with other volunteers that we’d been here over a year.  This stark contrast reminded me how privileged I am.

Getting ready for a nice dinner at a beach resort

The outside of a buffet restaurant at the beach resort

+ After having recently given a talk on keeping records, one farmer invited me over to help him get started.  We walked around his farm and counted how many of which type of trees he had.  In some way it reminded me of when I used to take inventory of the installation parts in our warehouse when I worked at Astrum Solar, but with a significantly different backdrop.

+ We compared notes at the end, and they mostly matched up.  However, it took him a very long time to sum up his totals.  Looking at the notes he’d taken as we walked, I realized that tally-marks are not universal.  I showed him my way of making the fifth mark diagonal through the last four and how this helped me count faster.  He practiced drawing the arrangement of marks on his piece of paper and said he’d learned something new.

learning to tally

- Despite my efforts to make our Agribusiness Manual document more user-friendly, this farmer still struggled quite a bit to understand how to input information into the correct columns of a spreadsheet.

Inventory spreadsheet

+ This family had apparently all talked about the idea of keeping records after the woman of the house attended my charla.  Their grandson was so enthused he said he will double-check our counts by actually marking each tree with a number to make sure he gets an accurate count.

- The woman of the house shared some bochinche (gossip) about me.  Apparently some people in town have said they don’t want to work with me because I don’t give out material things and therefore am no help.  They also said they don’t want to send their kids to read books in Spanish with a Gringa.

+ She then shared that her seventh grade grandson really likes coming to my reading group because I expose him to different kinds of books than what he studies in school, and he can practice reading.

+ This particular couple said they think it’s great that they have a Peace Corps volunteer in the community because of the new ideas I bring and that I help everyone by being a “human resource.”

- This house served me lunch: a big bowl of rice with a couple pieces of some very fried meat on top, which I assumed was pork.  Trying not to be rude, I ate a couple bites, and threw the rest to the dogs when no one was looking.  I was later informed that this was actually the meat of a conejo pintado, an endangered species.

- Leaving this house, I stopped to visit another and actually screamed when a ferocious dog came running at me.  Luckily all he did was bark, but I couldn’t stop shaking for a while.

- I got a haircut from the same friend that cut my hair last January.  This time he cut double what I’d asked for.

+ That friend cuts my hair for free.

+ Months after I began advertising my help starting compost piles and home gardens, new families continue taking me up on my offer.

- One of those families recently stood me up for a compost date.

+ At the end of my last charla I read “The Lorax” in Spanish out loud to the adults present to emphasize the need for farm planning.  I think it may have been the first time in their lives that anyone read a book to them.  They were mesmerized.

+ Our school recently celebrated its birthday.  We crowned a Queen of the School, who turned out to be a second grader.  The whole royal court made “recycled” dresses for the occasion.

- These “recycled” dresses required the purchase of confusing amount of new materials. Nevertheless, the kids looked adorable.

School court

+ At the school’s birthday celebration, I Israeli danced for everyone.  People seemed to enjoy it!  I’ve gotten some entertaining questions about it since then like “So that’s how people dance in your country?”  Me: “Umm only some people.”

Lila baila

- One of El Harino’s founding fathers is very sick and bed-ridden.

+ This sweet old man recently celebrated his 70^th birthday and I was honored to be invited to celebrate with is family.  I felt so much love in that house

Cuties getting ready for the fiesta

Happy birthday singing and cake 

- At the end of a crazy up and down day, I sometimes feel I have no one to talk to about these ups and downs that can really relate.  Even if I wanted to try to call someone from home, my schedule regarding when I can do so, and from on top of which hill, often does not work for any of you awesome people back in the states.

+ At least I have a blog where I can get some of these things off my chest, even if I have to wait weeks between when I handwrite a new entry until I can post it like this one!