18 September 2007

Birthdays and Deathdays

Happy birthday to our computer lab, which as of September 16 has been open successfully for a year of classes and other services to the community. ¡Felicidades! Our new round of classes has begun, at the same time that a group of high school boys has been painting the high school with the paint donated by the Secretary of Ed. It makes for an interesting combination of (semi)serious class and the rowdy boys outside who come dashing in to see if we can put on some music… preferably reggaetón (think Daddy Yankee). My bike that sits outside has never given so many vueltas (circles) or popped so many wheelies in its existence. Thank you, painters! I joined their ranks last Friday to help them out on a free day in the lab, and we got the lab painted a sickening combination of a sort of lime green on the bottom half and a light green on top. Of course I exclaimed later how beautiful it was… and it does look cleaner, at least! I was the only female painter. Apparently in this country painting is a male occupation, not to be invaded by the ranks of the opposite sex. Why? It’s not exactly work that’s pesado (heavy). But every girl that stopped by that I invited to help paint looked at me like I was crazy and exclaimed that they weren’t going to do it!

This past week has brought with it a rash of random deaths in our community. It’s really interesting how there will be long periods of time in which nobody passes away, and then all of a sudden there will be a week or two in which there are many natural and unnatural deaths together. My neighbors commented that it’s caliente (hot) right now for dying. I agree! In the group of deaths that have happened recently, it has included muertes (deaths) from old age, a freak accident involving electrocution while cleaning fish in the middle of the night, a couple of crashes on the highway (pretty gruesome, actually), and a few by fights or unexplained violence. While discussing the phenomena of hit and runs here in this country, everyone here is a proponent of it. The reason: if the driver stops to apologize to the family or bystanders and see what happens, those same bystanders or family members will, almost without question, in turn kill that driver. Perhaps we need to see some changes in the judicial system so the people don’t feel such a strong need to take the law in their own hands – one of the many changes this country could afford to make.

My English class had a fun surprise the other week when we received our first group of pen pal letters from my friend Megan’s middle school Spanish class. Unfortunately the excitement did not motivate my students to get their own letters done quickly, and I have had to hassle them now for more than two weeks to get them finished! Also since nobody here really uses the postal system, when deciding what to send them (like the Pixy Stix they sent us), everyone was suggesting rather large or heavy items. Multiply that by 30 and you have quite the expensive package to mail! I think I convinced them to settle on some typical juice mix of GuanábanaYa… that is, if I ever get all the letters in.

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