I teach here as well

Back from tourist land! Back to the place that wants me for what I can share, not for what I can pay.

Last week, the director of my school left to take a job closer to San Jose. This is interesting but more or less wont affect my teaching since she was only really around for a week and a half to begin with. Nonetheless, my 7th graders said goodbye to her, to Roxy, two Fridays ago with a party that was more excuisitely planned than any lesson plan Ive been able to throw together. I had no idea they had been planning anything, but mid morning, they began preparing drinks, ice cream, and crackers. Emily, who had arrived like the messiah the day before, bringing a mountain of vegetables and brown rice to cook for my family along with garlic and other things with flavor which I had began to think I would never eat again...sorry, at school that Friday, Emily and I received a formal invite mid day to the Goodbye party that was being organized for Roxy. School ended, or rather, sort of lost its seriousness and became disorganized as it does, and two 7th graders were shuffling their feet excitedly by the door, jittery and eager, hands grasping wads of shredded paper that they had torn to create confetti. They hurried Emily and I into the classroom and seated us at an elegantly set school bench that the kids had fashioned into a head table, complete with a white table cloth which I think was just a long sheet of white paper. The desks and the kids who belong to them were seated in a flawless half moon, facing us. My setting was neatly arranged with cookies, juice, and an ice cream slash Jello combo that is gross but inexplicably popular. Roxy entered, her smile showing off her braces and pin point sharp dimples, and was instantly showered in the makeshift confetti. If you had tried to teach these 40 kids in class and if you knew as I do that nothing in the world can get them to simultaneously say GREEN PANTS you would begin to understand how floored I was when this party began to evolve. There was an opening speech set to sad graduation music. There was a banana eating contest. No I am not joking. There was musical chairs, a thank you Roxy two page letter read aloud, a bobbing for hard candy in a cereal bowl of water contest, and then the kids threw egges and flour at each others faces.

At 5pm that same day, day 29 or my trip (today is day 39) Emily and I went to dinner at the house of Nicole who is 8 and precious, like all 8 year olds in this country. Her Mom had invited us for dinner, and when we arrived, I sat on the edge of the street and joke with Nicoles cousin Paulo, also 8, and Nicole for 30 minutes. They wore dirt stained clothes and dog slippers. They laughed at everything and always meant it. No people have eyes like the children here. My excitement at dinner was comparable to my excitement on Yom Kippur when we break the fast. We ate rice with cilantro, peppers, and garlic, beans and cilantro, cauliflower cooked in eggs, salad, brocolli, potatoes and cheese, and sugarcane for dessert. I loooved the food and felt wanted by the family, I want to spend most of my days here in other homes.

Im wearing a new bracelet these days, given to me by Erika, an 8 year old dark skinned Orphan in Moin whose hand I held tight in the Ocean for hours on Saturday. She gave me her necklace, which is now my bracelet, wrapped twice around my wrist, and locked into place and it is not coming off, ever.

More soon...