Dia del Nino

Friday was Dia del Nino at the school. We went to school an hour late, left at 11, and just played games and partied.

As per usual, the school was not on the ball. We were supposed to arrive at 7:30 to set up our stations and get the rooms ready for the party. However, none of the administration was here at that time. By 7:55 we were still waiting on the woman who had the maps of where the stations were, so no one knew WHERE to set up, I was still waiting on the woman who had my supplies (I was in charge of sack racing, and I had no sacks), and the woman with the copies for the students to get checked off when they went to each station was not there. Fifteen minutes later, stalling with a class of crazed, out of uniform students, we finally got everything we needed (15 minutes is a long time when you have nothing to do with them!) and sent the kids off and went to set up the stations, a bit after the fact.

I was in a high energy station, in which I was running around, helping the kids, and yelling instructions. I got to wear a silly hat one of my students brought me, because he didn't want it after making it at the hat making station, and the younger students ate it all up. For each race, I gave sticker to the winner and if it was anywhere near close, I called a tie. It was a lot of fun, but it was exhausting. I finally had to send one 1st grader away because he won 7 times and I wanted some other kids to get a chance to play.

After the events were done, the kids came back to the room, which was decorated while I was away by parents, and we gave our Secret Friend gifts. My secret friend was Luis, and I got him a chocolate and a toy truck. I was Fernando's secret friend and he got be a new giraffe mug and a bobble head cat. It took up most of our party, which was good. We still had plenty of time for our three pinatas, pizza, and cupcakes. My kids were surprisingly well behaved during pinata time, until the pinatas burst open, but that's excpected.

Emily and I had our first big moment of teamwork, when one of her students confessed to not bringing in a gift for her secret friend. Her secret friend is a special boy who already has a number of problems at home, so we didn't want him to know she hadn't bothered to get himsomething. We quickly went through out classrooms and got him a page of stickers, a box of markers, a grizzley bear bookmark, and a dinosour. We wrapped it in tissue paper and used airplane stickers ro seal it. At the end of the day, he told Emily that this was the best party he'd ever been to, so we assume he doesn't know, or if he does, he's not too bothered. (This is a boy who was born to a cleaning lady, adopted by his birth mother's employers, never wanted by his adopted father, who is a rich man, but will not pay for anything because he already has kids and treats our student like a chore.)

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On Sunday, I went to the library because Norma Murcia had invited me to go to Los Sepulturas with a few folks from the library for a lunch. This was my understanding of it in advance, anyway. When I got there, more details began to unfold, as more people arrived, including Tiffany and Davean. By the time we had loaded up the truck with bags of clothes, pinatas, and candy, I still was sure what was going on. When we drove past Los Sepulturas (another part of the Mayan ruins, that I actually haven't been to yet), to the next dirt road, drove down it and were greeted by a host of children from the nearby villiage, I began to get a better idea of what was going on.

We parked the truck and let the kids help us carry all of the supplies we brought. We crossed a wooden hanging bridge, with several repaired spots, that swayed as we walked. We continued to walk through a large grass field with old drying barns for tobacco, that are now used as chicken houses. I was dressed as though I'd be walking a firm trail, not through puddles and in ankle deep mud.

We called all the kids down from the villiage. We set up the pinatas, played games, and read them books. We gave out cookies and coca-cola. At first we gave out 3 cookies to each child, but there was plenty left over, so I then gave them to the mothers who were around and to children who looked at me with any amount of longing. Some of them were just hungry.

Before we left, we gave each child a bag of candies and an article of clothing that would fit. There were left overs of the clothes, so we kept handing them out, but some of the girls, especially the older ones, and some of the mothers were very pushy. It was hard to blame them, there were two early girls, budding into puberty who wanted all the cute clothes. It was interesting, and probably good for me to see, that it's not just in our culture of excess that teenage girls want more and want to be as pretty as possible. They got fairly grabby by the end, and it was hard to make sure that the more timid kids also got their share of the clothes.

After we'd given it all away, we picked up all the trash, left it in a bag, packed up the rest of our things, walked back through the field and mud, across the bridge, and to the car, where we sat in the back and ate empanadas with cabbage. We then drove back to town.