I still plan to write a blog about the group retreat we had last week, but today was such a ridiculous day that I feel like it merits a day-in-the-life post. While life here does tend to be crazy in general, this happened to be a particularly crazy Wednesday, so don't consider this a typical day by any means. I figure it's fun to share about the ridiculousness of Nica life as well sometimes!
7:00am: Wake up and eat some delicious French Toast while getting some papers ready for the day and checking in on e-mail (which I'm WAY behind on - sorry if I owe you an e-mail!) Also finish hand-writing all our milk day forms, since I realized last night that our printer was out of ink.
8:00am: Do some final Facebook spamming for Chase Community Giving competition.
8:10am: Pack up the car. It's milk day, one of the days where we pass out milk, cereal/oatmeal/beans, and vitamins to the kiddos in our Child Sponsorship program.
8:20am: Leave the house to drive to Chureca. On the way, pick up the nurse who works with us, who is waiting on the side of the road with 100+ lb of cereal.
8:50am: Arrive at Chureca. We can't drive in the front entrance today for some reason, which we normally do for milk days. So, we park at the back entrance, and wait for the father of a former Child Sponsorship kiddo, who has agreed to meet us with his horse and buggy to carry our stuff in down a path which isn't drivable with a car. Between the hand-written milk day forms and the horse and buggy entrance, we seem to have regressed technologically as far as milk days go.
9:05am: Horse and buggy arrive and we load up all our stuff and then, after a short chat with a passing policeman who seems kind of confused by us, walk behind the horse and buggy to the clinic.
9:15am: Arrive at clinic, set up for milk day, get jumped on by Esteven and later by Douglas, two of my favorite child sponsorship kids. Look how cute Esteven is...he's also a little monkey and loves to climb on us all the time.
10:30ish: About halfway through milk day, realize that there had been a misunderstanding between me and the nurse who works with us, likely due to my far-from-perfect Spanish ability. This led to me giving some families too much food...so we had to retrieve some. Slightly awkward. Note to self: ask for clarification a lot of times to make sure Spanish isn't a failure in the future.
11:00ish: Walk out of Chureca, stop by the ink store to refill our printer cartridge (which doesn't work for some reason....boo), and stop by the grocery store to buy some snacks for a kid's English pool party!
12:00pm: Arrive home and eat lunch while working on some finance stuff and lesson planning for my math and literacy classes.
1:15pm: Head out for math and literacy, with two copies of my worksheets since I've only had two students for the past couple weeks. Drive to the place we park our car during programs, and then walk the 1km to El Farito for class.
1:30pm: Math and literacy starts. Our attendance has doubled for some reason today, and we had 3 less PDs to run the program than usual...so we improvised! I will say that one skill that I'm getting very good at here is reacting to changes on-the-fly, since things rarely go as planned in Nica. I worked on letters/the alphabet with one of the preschool students, and simple words with a low-level first grader. Then, during math, I had four students instead of my normal two, so I very quickly made two more worksheets, and I think they learned at least SOMETHING about inequalities with fractions!
3:00pm: Leave math and literacy as soon as it ends to walk back to the car, and drive to pick up 16 kids and 3 adults to come to a pool party - an attendance prize for one of our kid's English classes. It was our class with our youngest students, so we stuck to the shallow end of the pool. They were pretty cute!
4:40pm: Herd all the kiddos back into the car to drive them home and make two trips to get all of our teen English students to class. A bunch of our kids decided to help me out by walking partway so I didn't have to return as far on my 2nd trip. Have I mentioned that I LOVE our teen English students?
5pm: Help out with teen English. I don't actually teach this class, just help with classroom control, attendance, sharpening pencils, etc - basically whatever I can do to help it run smoothly for Sam and Maggie. I LOVE this class and it's usually a highlight of my Mondays and Wednesdays. :)
6pm: Class ends, and I do two trips to drive students and fellow PDs home before heading to El Farito for an extra beginner's English class Sam and I are teaching. We weren't able to have class yesterday due to no electricity and our students being unable to read their papers without light, but we have a placement exam tomorrow and they wanted a review day. About 20-25 students show up to a weirdly-scheduled class to review - I was so excited they all came! And, on the whole, they knew most of what we were reviewing, which is good news.
7pm: Leave El Farito, pick up some friends who are coming to meet with us about the nonprofit they run, and head home.
7:20pm: Eat some dinner while meeting with Fabricio, Norman, and Gabe about the work that they do with preschools in the area. They are doing some great things and it was a lot of fun to learn more about what they do!
8:30pm: Realize I've been working for 12 hours straight and am exhausted - time to be unproductive!
9pm: Almost fall asleep while drinking coffee sitting at the table in the office. Ooooops.
9:15pm: Catch up with a few friends from home online, and write this blog.
As crazy as the day was, I was incredibly joyful for most of it, even when exhausted. I always prefer being too busy to not busy enough, and having so much to do here helps me stay present. I also just have to laugh at the randomness of life here sometimes - it definitely keeps me on my toes!
Lastly, I mentioned earlier how we don't take many pictures of La Chureca, since we want to build trust with the families and not be "slum tourists" (which there are a ridiculous number of - groups of Americans who come into Chureca with police escorts and walk around and take pictures from their cushy air conditioned bus). However, I do want to share Chureca with you, and today I snapped a picture of the trash workers from a distance as we walked in. As new trash is dumped, many of the people who live in Chureca dig through it to find recyclables or things they can sell. Many, many people work in the trash each day, as vultures circle around overhead. As you'll see, the view is actually beautiful around Chureca, other than the piles of trash. Hopefully this will help start to paint a picture for you in your head, even though it still doesn't show you anything about the homes or lifestyles of our families - that will come in time. Click on the picture (and any other picture I post) to see a bigger version - I know this one is super small here, but click and then you'll be able to check it out!
Although we didn't win the Chase competition this week, it made me realize how large Manna's support system is, and how large my personal support system is. To each of you, thank you so much for your support - whether it be prayers, financial support, encouraging words, or just a quick e-mail to say hi. I have been incredibly blessed by each of you, and I only hope that I can also be a blessing in your life.
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