American Time (6/6-12)

This week was somewhat surreal in that only American volunteers were in the house for the majority of the week and because 2nd and 5th graders had no school all week they did our chores for us all week as well.  That meant no sweep team and no comedor clean up, aka a lot more sleep for Sarah!  The volunteer thing we didn't realize until Tuesday night: Monika was gone for her 6th month visa renewal and Martina was off working on a farm in Mexico as research for the house.  This realization evolved into us standing outside in the rain singing the national anthem.  :-D  I felt very patriotic.

The patriotism continued while helping my girls with their homework that week.  They were supposed to list about five or six disasters for their homework giving details about where and what happened.  My detailed knowledge of disasters is somewhat limited and mainly restricted to events in the United States so they all went back to school with very American themed assignments.  One event in particular though they were very curious about: 9/11.  Apparently their teacher had gone into some depth about the event, but not very much and I was asked repeatedly for more information.  That was a surreal experience, trying to explain in Spanish what happened as well as the importance of the event in the lives of Americans.  I'm not sure I was fully able to communicate the impact, but I tried my darnedest.  I think it's one of those things you can't fully grasp unless you've had a similar, national-scale, devastating event in your own life to compare it to.

Thursday, the 9th I helped with a tour group.  They requested to have the tour in Spanish as they were spending a few weeks in Cuernavaca to learn Spanish, but I don't think it was a really good idea. We host groups from this particular language school often and normally they just take the tour in English since most have only a preliminary knowledge of Spanish.  I went along as a translator and ended up basically re-giving the tour in English. 

My spontaneous help with the tour meant I was late for the April/May birthday party held that afternoon.  As it was raining we held the party in the terraza.  It was the standard good food and presents affair.

La puerta/the entrance

Jeremy fashionably showing off the drinks and presents.

The food assembly line: we served the kids.

Everyone!

Me and one of the new girls.  She has an awesome laugh.  You can't help but join in.

Monika also returned from Guatemala that night with photos and stories of the NPH house there.  Bottom line: pretty different.  Only about 300 kids as opposed to over 500, 25 volunteers, really nice volunteer housing, and they get every weekend off.  Interesting. Haha!  No, I'm happy here, but I must admit, the stories and photos did make me a little jealous.

Friday night to start the weekend off right the section played a little soccer before dinner and then enjoyed a movie in the patio.  The rest of the weekend was pretty chill.  The biggest events: a bird crapped on my head while we were in the school (ewwww) and the entire house went running Sunday afternoon.  I thought I was going to die I was so out of shape (and still am).  Other than that it was a lot of hanging out in the section, reading or watching movies.  A pretty nice way to spend the weekend.