Time Flies When… You´re in Achuapa? 06/17/10
So I can´t believe it´s been almost a week since I last posted. I guess I intended at first to wait until I had at least started to do something, and all of a sudden I´ve been swept up in this storm of happiness and anxiety and exasperation and complete relaxation. It´s been a ride already and I don´t know where its headed. I have greatly benefitted however already from a dose of structure in the last couple of days, establishing my routine. That is, I get up around 8 (if this sounds earler, my host mom gets up at 4am every morning to start making tortillas) and Gladys my host mom makes me a breakfast batido (a milk’based smoothie) with bananas and sometimes pineapple for energy. Then I wash a couple items of clothes by hand, put them out to dry and take a cold shower. Gladys heads to work at 9am, at which point i start to get my things together and dawdle a bit, getting to the library about 10am. The morning is my planning period. From 10 to 12am I do practice examples for the afternoon activities. Today was my first day of doing this, as I felt it would be nice to do Father´s Day Cards for this weekend. It is a simple popup card, but as with any art activity that goes on, it is not easy to be doing anything for long without a gang of anxious nibbling youngsters to come flocking toward the activity. So I started with two compañeros, Randel and Katherin (la negrita) and we started going at it. I showed Rafaela, the librarian, what I was doing when I was finished and she was so intrigued and delighted that she wanted me to teach her how to do it as well! So we all sat and talked and drew for 2 and a half hours making these precius little animal cards, which i will enseñar later with fotos. It so happens that Rafaela has to go to this taller, workshop, tomorrow, its like a meeting for teachers and librarians. She exclaimed Oh Kati! You came just a tiempo (just at the right time) because now she has something to show and teach all of the other teachers this very simple but FUN and Easy to do little card. It made my heart shine and shine. Also this little boy Randal who was very shy and cold to me at first I called over to work with me and he is small but learned very fast and is also quite artistic. He warmed up to me real quick with a little bit of patience and now its like I have a little sidekick. 
As for little Leonardito, I have had many adorable moments with already. He is only one year old so he is just learning to walk but he has to keep momentum to stay upright or he falls down PLOP right on his butt. On Tuesday Gladys and I had to watch him while Margini, his mom, went to a job interview in Managua. This was the first time he had ever been left along by his mother and so when I woke up and walked into the kitchen my host mom said to me, Kati, estamos jodido con este chavalo. Kati, we are f*ed with this little boy. We did fine though! And Margini got the job!
I don´t know if its the Choloquine malaria stuff or just being so far from home or maybe its the spirituality in the mountains within which we are nestled, but MAN have I been dreaming up a storm. This morning I woke up with mother on my mind and had to cry a little bit to know that she has come all this way to accompany me here to this foreign place. I know that by working with kids and especially in doing art with them this channel will only get stronger and make me stronger but in the course of everything sometimes all I want is just to be completeltey utterly myself and know that in her arms that will forever be enough.
On the friend making front I have made a band of chavala friends from the girls who live on the corner. They are sweet girls, and have been very open and warm to me from the start. Whether this is because I have been tutoring them English on the side I don´t know, but one of them has invited me to her 16th birthday out on her farm and also they are big volleyball players. One of them Alma, (meaning soul coincidentaly) is particularly nice and we are going to dance tonight! Yip!
This one girl who keeps coming into the library for help with her English homework is a gorgeous, terribly timid girl who I think was at first afraid of me (imagine!) but has recently shown a great interest in art classes and even showed me some of her little ink drawings that she sketches between the pages of her algebra homework. What amazes me is actually how much kids here like to draw or actually do draw despite the fact that, for example, sketchbooks or really any kind of real art supplies is virtually unheard of here. All the library has for example is a little tin of stubby broken colored pencils and a little jar of sorry looking paint brushes.
Among other side projects that I have initiated with Rafaela are, for one, putting locks on the outside latrines so that teenagers don´t close themselves in there and engage in risky behavior (yes, it has been happening) (*on a side note *there was, until a couple of years ago only ONE flushing toilet in the entire town of Achuapa. Meaning for 4,000 people) Also, I am going to get some kids together and repaint both the outside and the inside of the library, which is desperately filthy and tired looking. Finally I have started a sketch journal club, where, though the kids don´t know it yet, I am going to try to get them to start writing for an hour every day. This being al ulterior motive because some how I haven´t found much time to write yet and the library is always practically empty the last hour of the day so I figure if I start writing maybe some kids will join me.
That´s it for now! Time for rice and beans!