here i am in the jungle with a local farmer...we cleared out some banana trees to make a fish hatchery.
Here is my "boyfriend," a sassy little four-year-old Alejandro who lives next door. He likes to swing on the vines on his tree.
here i am in a jungle tree!!!!!
Here is my buddy Scarlett, lounging dramatically on the floor on her house. Also pictured: Boris the cat.
Here is m fiendish little sister, Carlita, eating some fresh coconut.
Here I am washin´my clothes at the pila in my backyard in alubaren. one of the neighbor kids took it, rather artfully i think, through the barbed wire fence. oooooooh.
Here is little Norlin and his kid brother, Saul. Saul is making his Angry Eyes.20 October 2008
Hey, chochachos! Guess what! It’s raining! OH HEAVENS WHAT A SURPRISE. Not a lot is new here in Alubarén, or as I like to call it, the Lubes…but only in mental jokes to myself, because no one here would think that was funny…actually, you guys probably don’t think it’s funny either. I’m sorry for my bad jokes. Man, my legs are itchy…must be my new leg-beards growin’ in after I shaved em all off for the swearing-in ceremony…yesssss, comin’ in nice and thick. So sparkly and luxurious. And stabby.
So, I finally went swimming in the big river that runs through the Lubes yesterday (Sunday)…my neighbor-friend Lourdes invited me, with her two girls Lisbeth and Kayli and a ton of niños. Because of the rains we’ve been getting the water was really high and running really fast, so we spent like three hours scrambling on rocks up the length of the river and then throwing ourselves into the swirling brown rapids and zooming back down to the sandy calm part. It was a blast, but I managed to break a toenail, scrape my legs up, and get badly sunburned (stupid sneaky Honduran sun, it was so cloudy when we started…). Even so it was excellent fun and the perfect temperature…nothing sucks more than a freezing river (except maybe a Fire River, that would probably be worse). One of the houses I’m lookin’ at renting is right by the river, so if I end up moving in there you can bet I will take all my meals seating in the water. Maybe I can even sling up a hammock in the water…hells yes. The only problem is it’s pretty dirty, people here just throw their garbage in the water—when I complained about it, Lourdes just informed me “No, it’s fine, the current just takes it away!” I’m becoming something of a garbage crusader here…I almost made a 7-year-old cry today when I freaked out after she threw her banana peel in the creek. But they make me cry when they pollute, so it’s fair.
I haven’t gone in to Fondo Cristiano in more than a week! I keep meaning to, but at this point, I feel like my time is better spent just meeting people and hanging out in the community than sitting in an office and eating churros (that’s what they call chips here, which was a BIG disappointment the first time I was offered churros and received crappy cheese puffs instead of the delicious crispy fried dough covered in cinnamon I was expecting). DUDES I just captured a tiny baby gecko that was hanging out in my bed! He was the length of a battery, all grey and adorable…just waiting to be my special bedtime friend. However Peace Corps policy states that I can’t have men in my bed while staying with my host family, so I escorted him outside.
Anyway, I’m still really homesick (which I’ve never felt before, it’s basically a giant America-life-shaped hole inside me), but it’s getting a lot better. The more folks I meet, the happier I feel. Last week I made tortillas with the mother of one of the girlies in the preschool, and then she made me friend bananas and gave me some coke. I also visit my neighbor Scarlett a lot, who’s one of my best friends here (and happens to be three-years-old). She lives with her “mom,” who’s actually her grandma (her real mom abandoned her). Her grandma is named Nedi, and she’s amazing. She’s got super long steely-gray hair and has this slow, laid-back chuckle that is basically her response to everything little Scarlett does. She’s a great mom/grandma, and I love hanging out with them in their little house (and it’s not for the amazing paletas, or homemade popsicles, that they always have on supply). Scarlett likes to model for us, and she’ll strut all over the house, shaking her butt and blowing kisses to an imaginary audience. I have no idea who taught her this. The other day she was asking me about my family, and asks, “What’s your daddy called?” I told her, “My daddy is named Andy,” to which she replied “That’s not true!!” I raised an eyebrow and asked what she thought my dad’s named was. “Your daddy’s name is JOHN!” she informed me matter-of-factly. John, if you recall, is the gringo I’ve replaced…adorable. She’s a very creative kid, though…one day I was twirling her around by her wrists like a helicopter, and making airplane noises. Later on, I heard her buzzing like a plane and poked my head into the room to see her whinging her poor cat Boris around by his paws. Like I said, very creative.
That’s all the news I’ve got for now…I understand the ‘Cats are BOWL BOUND!!! HELLS YES PEOPLE. If it wasn’t for stupid MSU, we’d be undefeated…what a great season. I miss my drumline days terribly (so often I’ll glance at my watch and think, oh man, we’d totally be hacking through Chicken in a Roll right now…), and even more so, I miss my drumline friends. I know the makeup of the line has changed dramatically this year, and I’m excited for Christina and Josh and the all the other new leadership roles you guys have taken up with so many new freshmen. Go throw yourselves a party at the Tit, you’ve earned it (keys are under the mat).
Make good choices, people. Try not to step in too much dog poop (I’ve done that about 8 times in the past week, including TWICE today). Cow poop is okay, though.
Love,
Hayley
P.S. Max and Harrison, make your parents take you guys to a Northwestern football game! Just don’t forget to wear “PURPLE GO TATS”!
23 October 2008
Hey, chochachos! Man I got tasty bluegrass janglin in my ear-holes and I’m eating a big bowl of raw onions, sweet peppers, and tomatoes (aka the vegetation of Alubarén) and it is just a GOOD NIGHT. It’s Thursday the 23rd, aka exactly 12 days until we chose a new president. I actually caught some scrambled CNN en Espanol this morning, and they showed McCain hollering about how Obama’s never seen war, and then Obama giving a bunch of people high-fives. I reckon that about sums up what you guys with your constant CNN (en Ingles) have seen. In a way I’m glad I’m removed from the constant saturation of political bullshit but DANG do I feel outta the loop. But you guys would be surprised how many country folks out here are somewhat well-informed about the haps “allá” (or “other there,” what they call the US); lots of people ask me if I like “el Moreno” or “el trigueño” (aka the dark-skinned guy) or if I like “el que se parece a Bush,” (aka the guy who looks like Bush). I had a passionate conversation tonight with the grandpa of my buddy Scarlett, (whose name is Marcos and has a sweet MTV baseball hat) who wanted to know why we we’re at war with Iraq, and how it might change with a new president. Lots of people have asked me about that, actually, and usually tell me something like “that President of yours really loves war, doesn’t he? Why do you Americans love war so much?” and then I have to explain that most of us don’t actually have little decorative pillows on our beds with “I Love War” cross-stitched onto the fabric. Or maybe you do, I don’t know what kind of sales the Pottery Barn is having these days. What with the Second Great Depression upon us, maybe people are getting desperate for cheap throw pillows…
Too soon? Let me know when I can make Grapes of Wrath jokes (old dudes drinking breast milk, anyone?). Anyway. Sorry. So this week was great, even though I didn’t do much. As I do every Monday, I went over to my friend Lourdes’ house, the woman who has the 10-year-old boy with Down’s Syndrome named Norlin, and a four-year-old (who has some behavior issues of his own) named Saul. I brought my watercolors (which I bought in Honduras and are mondo-sucky; I’ve used them twice and they’re basically gone) and some markers and colored pencils, and sat down to do art with the kids. Like I said before, neither child has been to school before, and their folks haven’t attempted to teach them anything on their own. So I’ve decided to work with the kids and at the same time teach the parents how to teach their children. (They rent a little room that’s connected to the Registry, where their father works, so we painted right in the office.) I cut up a bunch of squares and colored them different colors, and then spread them out in front of Norlin. I handed Norlin a red square, and asked him to find the other red one, the one that was the same. He had a lot of trouble with this matching game, so I took away all of the cards except three pairs. After a lot of encouraging, he successfully found the other red square!! All the people waiting in the Registry cheered and clapped! Norlin just beamed and shouted, “Yo, yo, yo, yo!” (Me, me, me, me!) He still had no idea what color it was, but he usually remembered which was pink and, after half an hour, learned brown as well. Saul also liked the game, but he wasn’t quite so challenged by the matching aspect (though so far, he can’t correctly identify ANY colors). I asked Lourdes if she’d like to send Norlin to school next year (school here starts in February, not the fall), and she said yes. She never tried to send him before because they don’t usually take special-needs kids, but I talked to the kindergarten teacher here and she said she’d love to have him. I talked to the principal of the elementary school (which is separate from kindergarten here), and she said they’d take him the next year if he’s ready for 1st grade. I still have to talk to the woman in charge of the school system in Alubarén (basically a superintendent), but things are looking good for Norlin!! The only issue is, I don’t know if HE wants to go…he says he does, but I know being away from home for a couple hours every day would be rough. Maybe he can start out just going a few days a week…only thing left is teaching him to pee in the toilet, not wherever he is currently standing when the urge strikes him.
That’s about all I did this week, work-wise…played in the park with the kids a lot and spied on the house I want to rent. My friend Edgar knows the owner’s mother (the owner lives in Tegus now), and he said she’d like to rent it to me…I just haven’t spoken to her yet. He said it’s got a bed and a fridge inside that I could use! The house is small and humble, but it’s gorgeous outside. It’s got a huge garden in the front with banana trees and squash plants, a creek that runs around the house and feeds into the river, which it’s right next to…but it’s built way up so flooding wouldn’t be an issue. It’s also got huge trees, an outdoor woodstove, a latrine, a pila, and a little patio with perfect hammock-placement potential. Hells yes. Not that I don’t love my current house and family, but they’re just not quite like my other two families and I don’t think I could live with them for two years. Plus, big trees!!
I spoke with the preschool teacher here, and she wants me to give a workshop to her and all the other preschool teachers on classroom management and strategies for managing child behavior. I’m gonna write up a little manual and design it so it’s interactive and involves a lot of role-playing and practicing…it’s gonna be so sweet. Hella “Silla para Pensar” (thinking chair) and token economies…get ready you little hellions, you ‘bout to learn to behave without even KNOWING you’re learning it. BUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Guess that’s about it...got all my baseball equipment the other day, including a little notebook John had used with a bunch of old notes in like “batting order” and stuff like that. Stuff that makes me nervous. How do I choose batting order?! That sounds like the sort of thing that people could throw back at me later…all screamin’ and throwin’ baseball hats angrily to the dirt. “You FOOLISH gringa! We wouldn’t have lost that million-dollar tournament if you hadn’t made such a TERRIBLE batting-order! HOW DAAARE YOOOOU” etc etc. I’m pretty sure, also, that I maybe broke the catcher-face-protector thing. Balls.
I love you guys. Happy almost Halloween! We don’t celebrate that glorious day of costumes and candy and adventure, so feel free to send me chocolate and plastic spiders (but no fake cobwebs, I hate that business).
Love,
Hayley
Hey, chochachos! Guess what! It’s raining! OH HEAVENS WHAT A SURPRISE. Not a lot is new here in Alubarén, or as I like to call it, the Lubes…but only in mental jokes to myself, because no one here would think that was funny…actually, you guys probably don’t think it’s funny either. I’m sorry for my bad jokes. Man, my legs are itchy…must be my new leg-beards growin’ in after I shaved em all off for the swearing-in ceremony…yesssss, comin’ in nice and thick. So sparkly and luxurious. And stabby.
So, I finally went swimming in the big river that runs through the Lubes yesterday (Sunday)…my neighbor-friend Lourdes invited me, with her two girls Lisbeth and Kayli and a ton of niños. Because of the rains we’ve been getting the water was really high and running really fast, so we spent like three hours scrambling on rocks up the length of the river and then throwing ourselves into the swirling brown rapids and zooming back down to the sandy calm part. It was a blast, but I managed to break a toenail, scrape my legs up, and get badly sunburned (stupid sneaky Honduran sun, it was so cloudy when we started…). Even so it was excellent fun and the perfect temperature…nothing sucks more than a freezing river (except maybe a Fire River, that would probably be worse). One of the houses I’m lookin’ at renting is right by the river, so if I end up moving in there you can bet I will take all my meals seating in the water. Maybe I can even sling up a hammock in the water…hells yes. The only problem is it’s pretty dirty, people here just throw their garbage in the water—when I complained about it, Lourdes just informed me “No, it’s fine, the current just takes it away!” I’m becoming something of a garbage crusader here…I almost made a 7-year-old cry today when I freaked out after she threw her banana peel in the creek. But they make me cry when they pollute, so it’s fair.
I haven’t gone in to Fondo Cristiano in more than a week! I keep meaning to, but at this point, I feel like my time is better spent just meeting people and hanging out in the community than sitting in an office and eating churros (that’s what they call chips here, which was a BIG disappointment the first time I was offered churros and received crappy cheese puffs instead of the delicious crispy fried dough covered in cinnamon I was expecting). DUDES I just captured a tiny baby gecko that was hanging out in my bed! He was the length of a battery, all grey and adorable…just waiting to be my special bedtime friend. However Peace Corps policy states that I can’t have men in my bed while staying with my host family, so I escorted him outside.
Anyway, I’m still really homesick (which I’ve never felt before, it’s basically a giant America-life-shaped hole inside me), but it’s getting a lot better. The more folks I meet, the happier I feel. Last week I made tortillas with the mother of one of the girlies in the preschool, and then she made me friend bananas and gave me some coke. I also visit my neighbor Scarlett a lot, who’s one of my best friends here (and happens to be three-years-old). She lives with her “mom,” who’s actually her grandma (her real mom abandoned her). Her grandma is named Nedi, and she’s amazing. She’s got super long steely-gray hair and has this slow, laid-back chuckle that is basically her response to everything little Scarlett does. She’s a great mom/grandma, and I love hanging out with them in their little house (and it’s not for the amazing paletas, or homemade popsicles, that they always have on supply). Scarlett likes to model for us, and she’ll strut all over the house, shaking her butt and blowing kisses to an imaginary audience. I have no idea who taught her this. The other day she was asking me about my family, and asks, “What’s your daddy called?” I told her, “My daddy is named Andy,” to which she replied “That’s not true!!” I raised an eyebrow and asked what she thought my dad’s named was. “Your daddy’s name is JOHN!” she informed me matter-of-factly. John, if you recall, is the gringo I’ve replaced…adorable. She’s a very creative kid, though…one day I was twirling her around by her wrists like a helicopter, and making airplane noises. Later on, I heard her buzzing like a plane and poked my head into the room to see her whinging her poor cat Boris around by his paws. Like I said, very creative.
That’s all the news I’ve got for now…I understand the ‘Cats are BOWL BOUND!!! HELLS YES PEOPLE. If it wasn’t for stupid MSU, we’d be undefeated…what a great season. I miss my drumline days terribly (so often I’ll glance at my watch and think, oh man, we’d totally be hacking through Chicken in a Roll right now…), and even more so, I miss my drumline friends. I know the makeup of the line has changed dramatically this year, and I’m excited for Christina and Josh and the all the other new leadership roles you guys have taken up with so many new freshmen. Go throw yourselves a party at the Tit, you’ve earned it (keys are under the mat).
Make good choices, people. Try not to step in too much dog poop (I’ve done that about 8 times in the past week, including TWICE today). Cow poop is okay, though.
Love,
Hayley
P.S. Max and Harrison, make your parents take you guys to a Northwestern football game! Just don’t forget to wear “PURPLE GO TATS”!
23 October 2008
Hey, chochachos! Man I got tasty bluegrass janglin in my ear-holes and I’m eating a big bowl of raw onions, sweet peppers, and tomatoes (aka the vegetation of Alubarén) and it is just a GOOD NIGHT. It’s Thursday the 23rd, aka exactly 12 days until we chose a new president. I actually caught some scrambled CNN en Espanol this morning, and they showed McCain hollering about how Obama’s never seen war, and then Obama giving a bunch of people high-fives. I reckon that about sums up what you guys with your constant CNN (en Ingles) have seen. In a way I’m glad I’m removed from the constant saturation of political bullshit but DANG do I feel outta the loop. But you guys would be surprised how many country folks out here are somewhat well-informed about the haps “allá” (or “other there,” what they call the US); lots of people ask me if I like “el Moreno” or “el trigueño” (aka the dark-skinned guy) or if I like “el que se parece a Bush,” (aka the guy who looks like Bush). I had a passionate conversation tonight with the grandpa of my buddy Scarlett, (whose name is Marcos and has a sweet MTV baseball hat) who wanted to know why we we’re at war with Iraq, and how it might change with a new president. Lots of people have asked me about that, actually, and usually tell me something like “that President of yours really loves war, doesn’t he? Why do you Americans love war so much?” and then I have to explain that most of us don’t actually have little decorative pillows on our beds with “I Love War” cross-stitched onto the fabric. Or maybe you do, I don’t know what kind of sales the Pottery Barn is having these days. What with the Second Great Depression upon us, maybe people are getting desperate for cheap throw pillows…
Too soon? Let me know when I can make Grapes of Wrath jokes (old dudes drinking breast milk, anyone?). Anyway. Sorry. So this week was great, even though I didn’t do much. As I do every Monday, I went over to my friend Lourdes’ house, the woman who has the 10-year-old boy with Down’s Syndrome named Norlin, and a four-year-old (who has some behavior issues of his own) named Saul. I brought my watercolors (which I bought in Honduras and are mondo-sucky; I’ve used them twice and they’re basically gone) and some markers and colored pencils, and sat down to do art with the kids. Like I said before, neither child has been to school before, and their folks haven’t attempted to teach them anything on their own. So I’ve decided to work with the kids and at the same time teach the parents how to teach their children. (They rent a little room that’s connected to the Registry, where their father works, so we painted right in the office.) I cut up a bunch of squares and colored them different colors, and then spread them out in front of Norlin. I handed Norlin a red square, and asked him to find the other red one, the one that was the same. He had a lot of trouble with this matching game, so I took away all of the cards except three pairs. After a lot of encouraging, he successfully found the other red square!! All the people waiting in the Registry cheered and clapped! Norlin just beamed and shouted, “Yo, yo, yo, yo!” (Me, me, me, me!) He still had no idea what color it was, but he usually remembered which was pink and, after half an hour, learned brown as well. Saul also liked the game, but he wasn’t quite so challenged by the matching aspect (though so far, he can’t correctly identify ANY colors). I asked Lourdes if she’d like to send Norlin to school next year (school here starts in February, not the fall), and she said yes. She never tried to send him before because they don’t usually take special-needs kids, but I talked to the kindergarten teacher here and she said she’d love to have him. I talked to the principal of the elementary school (which is separate from kindergarten here), and she said they’d take him the next year if he’s ready for 1st grade. I still have to talk to the woman in charge of the school system in Alubarén (basically a superintendent), but things are looking good for Norlin!! The only issue is, I don’t know if HE wants to go…he says he does, but I know being away from home for a couple hours every day would be rough. Maybe he can start out just going a few days a week…only thing left is teaching him to pee in the toilet, not wherever he is currently standing when the urge strikes him.
That’s about all I did this week, work-wise…played in the park with the kids a lot and spied on the house I want to rent. My friend Edgar knows the owner’s mother (the owner lives in Tegus now), and he said she’d like to rent it to me…I just haven’t spoken to her yet. He said it’s got a bed and a fridge inside that I could use! The house is small and humble, but it’s gorgeous outside. It’s got a huge garden in the front with banana trees and squash plants, a creek that runs around the house and feeds into the river, which it’s right next to…but it’s built way up so flooding wouldn’t be an issue. It’s also got huge trees, an outdoor woodstove, a latrine, a pila, and a little patio with perfect hammock-placement potential. Hells yes. Not that I don’t love my current house and family, but they’re just not quite like my other two families and I don’t think I could live with them for two years. Plus, big trees!!
I spoke with the preschool teacher here, and she wants me to give a workshop to her and all the other preschool teachers on classroom management and strategies for managing child behavior. I’m gonna write up a little manual and design it so it’s interactive and involves a lot of role-playing and practicing…it’s gonna be so sweet. Hella “Silla para Pensar” (thinking chair) and token economies…get ready you little hellions, you ‘bout to learn to behave without even KNOWING you’re learning it. BUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Guess that’s about it...got all my baseball equipment the other day, including a little notebook John had used with a bunch of old notes in like “batting order” and stuff like that. Stuff that makes me nervous. How do I choose batting order?! That sounds like the sort of thing that people could throw back at me later…all screamin’ and throwin’ baseball hats angrily to the dirt. “You FOOLISH gringa! We wouldn’t have lost that million-dollar tournament if you hadn’t made such a TERRIBLE batting-order! HOW DAAARE YOOOOU” etc etc. I’m pretty sure, also, that I maybe broke the catcher-face-protector thing. Balls.
I love you guys. Happy almost Halloween! We don’t celebrate that glorious day of costumes and candy and adventure, so feel free to send me chocolate and plastic spiders (but no fake cobwebs, I hate that business).
Love,
Hayley
1 comment:
Oh, Hayley. I freakin love you. Is it creepy I regularly check your blog with fingers crossed that you've updated? John and I took a little jaunt up to Michigan last weekend and spent a good portion of the trip up talking about you and your adventures and Norlin. I hope you get that house! It sounds totally awesome. Miss you and your hairy legs. :)
Post a Comment