Feet of gold

Good day to my friends and family and others. Sometimes I put off blogging to wait for a particularly cute anecdote to include (and other times, internet access is too limited or I'm too lazy...hard to imagine, I'm sure). Well, our waiting and anticipation paid off!

Yesterday, one of my favorite student's fathers presented me with (yet another) head of platanos (plaintains). Would we call it a head? A bunch? A hand? Anyways, think of how you buy bananas, and that's what I got, but in plantain form. Cool. So then, the little boy was like "okay, I'll walk you back," which was really sweet. We start walking, and I ask him "doesn't it hurt you to walk without shoes?" "Nah. I have feet of iron," he replied. "If you have feet of iron, then I have feet of...cotton." He grinned and we spent the entire walk talking about what kind of feet we have; he has feet of iron, gold, wood, cement block. I have feet of cotton, feathers, leaves, and skimice (skim ice is like a frozen stick popsicle). We decided the flavor could be fresa (strawberry) because that's my favorite.

Reading help (and counseling) is going along slowly, mostly because I've been out of my town for various reasons, most recent reason being an engineering camp that I took 3 boys to. It was a ton of fun: we made boats out of cardboard and duct tape (that supported the weight of a participant), bridges from popsicle sticks and glue, paper airplanes, telescopes, climbed, swam, got really dirty, and really excited about engineering. Let's get this cleared up: I have no interest in becoming an engineer. However, I do have interest in helping my kids see what the engineering profession includes, and letting them know that if they work hard, their professional opportunities reach beyond farming and driving for other people.

This saturday, at long last, I will have my first ever science experiment class in the Dominican Republic! It should be somewhat different from the classes I got to teach in Baltimore for several reasons: 1) All spanish, all the time (do you know how to translate words like density and mass? cuz I sure don't...thank goodness for dictionaries). 2) Illiteracy (yes, it will be different when children can't read the instructions) 3) Teaching styles (here, the teaching style is to write something on the board and then have kids copy it, which doesn't really foster thinking) 4) Materials: at the SAB, the materials were limited to anything I could think up, basically; here, materials are limited to anything I can purchase with a small grant 5) Have I mentioned the language is different here before?

But anywho I'm excited, and so are many of the participants. Our first project will be tetrahedral kites made of straws and wax paper, and also hopefully bottle tornadoes. "Wind" is going to be the theme.

Also with regards to groups, last week I started a youth group. We will be using a manual of activities based on health and making good decisions and AIDS prevention, and hopefully it's fun for them. It's something I've been meaning to do for awhile, and it's refreshing to work with an older crowd.

Speaking of the language difference...it's neat that now I don't dread speaking spanish. I still make errors though, and that gets my goat. I mean, how come I can't just speak correctly? To make matters even funnier, when I speak in english now, I think of words in spanish. Basically, I can't speak either english or spanish right now. haha.

New joke from a friend: What do you call an old snowman?

Water.

Haha. Speaking of snow, it's been freezing here! Just kidding. It's hot as ever, but the rains are nice when I have an umbrella, because it's not so hot when the clouds are spitting out water.

Keep it real. Keep it fun. Keep it real fun.

con mucho amor,
alicia :-D