the fish whisperer

Just a few quick thoughts, lacking all panache, so pardon me.

We just got done with exams and school officially comes to a close on Wednesday. I graded 300 exams at 100 questions each, I was a little crazy by the end of the week. I had emailed my director after making the exam to ask if how long it should be (yes, I realize that I was a little tardy for the party there), but she came back to me saying I should have at least 8 -15 questions. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, that just seemed a little lazy to me, but after grading 3000 questions, I think I should’ve scaled it back a wee bit.

One of my students responded to the question on the exam: how are you? With: I am handsome. He was my 279th test and he totally got credit for that, handsome is a hard word!

A few days ago I got asked if gringos could talk to fish- I told her that I could, in fact, not speak to fish. But Harry Potter can speak to snakes so I’m sure JK Rowling must have some wizard who has the gift of maritime tongues. This gringa muggle can’t.

Yesterday, someone asked me if I wanted a cat. I did not. Then, unprovoked, she started telling me where kittens came from. Turns out, they apparently just come out of the mother’s mouth. I asked no further questions. But was wondering, does she throw them up like one big hairball, or do they just creep out one at a time? I guess I stand corrected because I wasn’t willing to do any correcting.

Mudslides

The news can be such a good tool for desensitizing people. We hear about the crazy floods, the tsunamis, the hurricanes, etc that happen in “these third world countries”. Most people couldn’t locate where I am on a map. But turns out other people live here too- 5 million other people who have few resources to deal with this type of disaster. The destruction that can be done in such a short time is intense, crazy, unbelievable, and horrifying. The mudslides this weekend destroyed lots of infrastructure, but most importantly, lives. Our host communities where we lived during our first two months here were badly affected- walls of mud sliding down the volcano into and onto houses. Above is a picture of a river that overflowed and spread over lots of space. The police were looking for missing persons above on the cliff where we were

I still have these very saturnine days here. I have days where I feel the enormity of the problems here, in the US and around the world. A few days ago, one of my third graders came by my room. Dirty, scratched up, and mosquito bitten, Alba came by the other day looking for shoes that she could wear during the Independence Day celebrations on Tuesday. Her teacher told her that the shoes she had were not satisfactory to march in the parade. Though she has big feet for a third grader (size six), I have even bigger feet and was unable to help.
Last week, Alba came to my room selling oranges at 4 cents a piece. She was alone, carrying a gigantic bag of oranges- and not gigantic by a third grader’s standards-just a lot of oranges in a huge bag. She was alone then. She then proceeded to tell me how the Catholics lie, how she had never heard of tea, how most of her relatives hate her, and that she has family in North Carolina who wanted to bring her across the border to the USA. She’s another face in the sea of faces, and not even her own family takes an interest in her or her education.

On a less gloomy note, it was Independence Day on Tuesday, September 15th, with a really wonderful display of pride in country. I have a slightly more selfish reason for being so happy that Independence Day has passed. Everyday, for the past month, the kids have been practicing their instruments. It is one of those realizations that I came to-why did my parents never encourage me to take up the trumpet, or drums, or trombone? Because they would’ve gone absolutely insane, that’s why. The kids practiced everyday, RIGHT OUTSIDE MY CLASSROOM, while I was trying to give my classes.
As well, they only learned one song, so it wasn’t like I could be impressed with their repertoire. At least that is over. All in all though, it was a nice parade, good ceremony, and good fun.

Attached are photos of Alba and the parade. Also, they make the smallest kids dress up as "professionals" -doctors, nurses, policemen, etc. Very gender discriminatory (boys doctors police, girls-nurses and secretaries), but funny.

Girl Fight.

If someone tries to schooch/slip/walk by you and doesn’t say, “excuse me”, you think it is rude. You might say something under your breath or to your friend… "eeexxxxuuussseee yoouu". Would you confront that person, maybe. Would you punch that person in the face?

Well if you were one of the two eighth grade girls in my class, you would have. While in a test before we left school because of the Swine Flu/H1N1/ gripe porcina scare, my students were taking a test, and the schoocher girl got a punch in the face. Which then turned into a full on girl fight. I did not have my camera there, so the above pictures are just a little something I pulled of the Internet. The girls full on went at it. Hair, clothes, closed-fist punches, open slaps, kicking violently. They rolled outside and all of the boys were rolling with laughter, and I had to pull them off of one another, jesus cristo, they were fuming. Uniforms torn up, and to the director’s office they went.

I mean, I think that it is important to be an assertive and strong-minded woman, but unrestrained and obdurate aren’t great qualities when someone is trying to walk by your desk.

Guns, Trucks and Efax

I’ve recently had my identity stolen. Not like an existential crisis, someone stole my credit card info- “Online Fraud”-“Identity Theft”- that fun stuff.

If you Google my name, you will now find that I am a gold star member of Guns America and I buy and sell shotguns, but not sawed off ones, the legit ones you can buy and sell legally online. As well, I am selling a 2001 Chevy, if anyone is interested. Also, I am apparently a wonderful customer of EFAX- so I like to shoot stuff up, drive my Chevy truck, and am environmentally aware of how much paper a fax uses, so I’ve gone green and receive my faxes in paperless form on the net- sweet.

So hopefully I’ll get that money back, because my monthly stipend isn’t covering my efax bill, on the other hand, hopefully my shotguns will start turning over quicker and I can use that to finance my other expenses.

As for El Salvador- all going well. We had a camp for girls (13-19 years old), and I did the “SEX” talk, and I did some MAYYYJJJJA myth busting. I’m sure I have no real audience on the blog, and I’m positive there is no one under 18, but since I’ll probably run for public office one day, I’ll keep it family friendly. Email for salacious details-OK not salacious, but strange, peculiar, odd, queer, weird, bizarre, curious, freakish, freak, quirky; mysterious, mystifying, puzzling, perplexing; unusual, uncommon, anomalous, irregular, abnormal, exceptional, singular, out of the ordinary, extraordinary-or one of those.

The pictures are of me giving the sex talk, collecting the firewood for the bonfire, and the “superhero” condoms- which the girls had to make. Each superhero had a power, like protecting women from violence or from pregnancy, etc. They thought it was hilarious ☺

Horses, Home, and High-flying

As per normal, life has sent lots of things my way. Thankfully, no car crashes to speak of.
I’ve ridden and arthritic horse through a guerilla warpath, gone home and come back, and have flown the skies in another way, via zip line/canopy tour.

Now, I'm not a natural born equestrian. I feel like I am pretty good at addressing my concerns, wants, and needs in my real life-and usually people respond. But, apparently horses don’t have the same consideration for me.
When I was a young girl, my family took a trip to Texas, where we went horseback riding. My horse was NOT listening to me. So my dad took over my horse on the path and I got on his. Well, it turns out that my horse was for little girls and his was for big men. My poor Texas horse (so said the guides) would probably have to be retired/made into glue, because it already had back problems, which weren’t ameliorated by my very strong father started riding it.
Fast-forward to 2009. I am in the capital for the swearing in party of the new volunteers, and decide to go up to a lake just north of the capital, because everyone raves about it. I go, I go horseback riding. While my experience wasn’t exactly traumatic as a child, I still didn’t feel incredibly comfortable on horseback. I definitely didn’t get any more comfortable when then gave me their version of “My little pony”, who didn’t even have young pony strength, but just looked like a pony, and was actually and arthritic old woman horse. So, fine, if we were on a flat path, but we were going through the mountains on an old guerilla warpath and my arthritic pony kept slipping on the rocks and up and down the mountains. She also refused to listen to me and I had to be rescued by my friend and the guide several times. Hours of sweating it out waiting to be crushed to death by my pony, I made it.

I also took an all too quick trip home for my aunt’s wedding. The whole family, the beach, the open bar, the surprise karaoke on the dance floor (DJ was taken aback), and being back home was a great feeling. Pictures included.

When I got home (El Sal), they lost my luggage. So, I had to stay near the capital and ended up going about an hour away to the mountains on a canopy tour- hanging hundreds of feet in the mountains on wires, fun times as well.

I have less than a year here (which Momma Hackett keeps pointing out), but it has FLOWN- I’m happy to be back with my kids/students, and happy to get back to work. I had such a wonderful time in the States though.

Also, the photo of me with a cocktail in my hand is a result of the hard work I did in the kitchen- I was caught on camera actually cooking instead of pouring cereal, which took it out of me.

A few weeks ago, I was involved in a car crash. The driver took the curve too fast, the car flipped a few times and we hit a pole. It wasn’t even like we hit the pole on the side of the car, we were straight up, vertical with the pole. Like, my head was against the window basically on the ground and the car was straight up and down on the pole. My parents didn’t call you in a fit, so that means I’m alright- no worries.
I was in a Peace Corps ordered neck brace for a few days. Since the accident was right outside of town, everyone knew about it and showed up at the health clinic where they brought me directly after the accident. Apparently, no one thought that closing the door to the check-up room was a good idea, so I was in a pretty good amount of pain having to constantly reassure the people I work with that I wasn’t. I can’t be sure that I was speaking Spanish, it was probably a Spanglish/gibberish.
Now, thankfully we were all wearing our seatbelts. That was definitely my mother’s doing- insisting that we wore them always. My father deserves credit here as well, because when we were little, instead of having a “curse jar” where the parents had to deposit money every time they said a naughty word, we had the “owe me a dollar” rule. Everytime we caught Pops without his seatbelt on and we said “owe me a dollar dad”, he had to put a dollar in the jar. That’s how we made our first hundred- and promptly purchased a Nintendo. Easiest money I ever made-but I digress.
So the accident happened, I was the big news in town. It was a good thing we hit that post, because if now, we would’ve kept on rolling down the dang mountain.
Now, it was a pretty terrifying experience, but I didn’t get that “life before my eyes” flash. The terrifying part is if we would’ve struck the pole a foot farther up, it would’ve hit me in the face, not the bed of the pickup. When I saw that, I was thanking my lucky stars.

All settled down, and I got back into my work after the accident. Thanks to a generous donation by my dentist of 20 years, all of my students got to learn about the fun world of oral hygiene. For the past month, we’ve been learning how to brush our teeth, how to brush the tongue, what happens if our teeth rot out, and how cavities form. WOO HOO. It is amazing how little the kids know about it, and how many little kids you see running around with their baby teeth rotting out. Every class I had, we would start by brushing the teeth. Thanks again to Dr. Konikoff and Kelly Scheer for working out that donation for me. It’s been amazing. The kids are loving it.

To conclude- the other day, I went to a Parents’ Day for a school I work with down the road. They insisted that I got my face painted (i.e. drawn on by eyeliner) like a cat. When I got on the bus home, everyone was looking at me more curiously than normal, for a reason I couldn’t work out until I got home and looked at my cat face. Picture included above.

I’ll be home for a little bit of time in May for my aunt’s wedding. Should be a good time- feel free to shower me with diamonds and gold.