"Dios, tú me cuidas muy bien!" is something Sister Miriam is always saying: "God, you take such good care of me!" As the cloudy, clammy, chilly, depressing winter descends over Lima, and I feel like my projects for the year are sputtering and falling flat, I'm trying to be better at recognizing that this is in fact true.
On Thursday I was feeling bottled up and useless because one after another, my things I was supposedly doing didn't happen. By the time I went with the parish ladies to visit the sick at 3:30, I was totally in a funk and easily irritated by the sweet, irritating old lady who always whines at me and hangs on me (figuratively but sometimes literally too). (and she accuses me of abandoning them when I've expressed no such intention. Sometimes in the past I have had to leave early, so now every time I put my guitar back in its case without an obvious reason, she says, Aaayyyy, the señorita's going to leave us again! I'm sure she has to go early today!-- I'm like, lady, could you at least wait until I'm actually abandoning you to complain about it?!)
But this Thursday was different because all six of us went together to one house to offer some cleaning services. The old grandmother who lives in this house, Genoveva, can walk or sit in a wheelchair but she spends most of her time in her bed, which doesn't have a real mattress, just a long foamy cushion thing where the mattress should be. Her house has a front room, a back room, and behind the back room a huge yard, littered with old junky stuff just sitting around, where a dog and three cats and possibly more animals live, and where their only water faucet sprays water into a big washtub. The two rooms are very dark because the walls are concrete and there are no windows; and they were insanely messy. Stuff all over every old, dirty piece of furniture there is, dirty dishes crusting in the same pile with clothes, the stove-oven unit looking like it hadn't been used in years because of the crust all over the top. Genoveva has a daughter and a grandson that live with her, but the daughter, Cristina, says that she gets depressed and has no energy and feels like she can't do anything. Considering the state of her house, this did not surprise me. I'd be depressed if I lived there.
So we went over all six together and asked if we could do some cleaning. They said yes. And the parish ladies went to work. It was obvious they were in their element. At least one of them never finished elementary school, but when it comes to cooking or cleaning a house or washing clothes by hand, they have a lifetime's worth of knowledge and experience. They grabbed brooms, mops, got water from outside, disinfectant from somewhere, soap from the store next door, and I stood there awkwardly trying to figure out how to help until Luisa, the lady who hangs on me and accuses me of leaving, said, Señorita Katalina, you do the music! I was like, OK!! Somebody helped Genoveva into her chair and sat her there facing me, and we proceeded to rock out every church song I know for the next hour and a half.
Genoveva can't speak very clearly--I never understand her, and almost no one else does either, she just sounds like she's saying Mwaa-mwa-mwaaa! Mwa-mwaaa!--but she always sings and claps along to the music, which is darling enough to break your heart. She has this thin, four-foot wooden pole that she keeps at her side, and when the dog comes in from the yard, she pokes at the dog with the pole to shoo it outside, feebly yelling, We-aah! (fuera, "out.") Cristina, to give us more light to work by, took this pole and pushed aside one of the cardboards in the center of the roof. I was like, well... that works. Most of the roof is tin but the center has this sunroof capacity.
When they finished, I went into the song, Resucitó, "He is Risen," because it truly was a miracle to me how these women transformed the house. It still wasn't exactly an appealing place to live, but at least it wasn't so dirty and messy any more. The grandson came in from school, a slightly chubby kid with a bright smile, and was so thrilled that he went to work right alongside the women, but then forgot to clean in favor of showing me lyrics of songs he knows. At the end Estela produced rolls and coffee for everyone from somewhere--even more of a miracle!--and the kid called me "amiga" when we left!! I was so touched. And I hadn't even done anything except sing--left all the hard labor to the women at least twice my age!--but I was doing what I do well, just like they were, and the music really transformed everyone's spirits and made it fun instead of oppressive.
So that afternoon was really a special gift, for me as well as for them. Hopefully now Cristina will be able to maintain some cleanliness, now that the massive overhaul that was too much for one person is done.
Then yesterday (Friday) I went to the school in the morning to tutor Liliana in reading. Trudging up the dirt road under that oppressive cloudy sky that just makes you want to go back to sleep, I got there by 8:30 and went upstairs to their classroom--and it was closed and locked, nobody home. This has happened to me often enough with various classes that I just sighed, rolled my eyes, and said, I guess Sara hasn't come in today. Typical. I guess I'll go home and be useless again. But going back down the stairs, I heard these wild, animal-like shrieks and whoops from the corner of the courtyard where the cafeteria room is, and said, Hmm... that might be them! And it was. The boys came running toward me across the courtyard and said, Señorita Katalina! Close your eyes! Overcoming my wariness, I let them lead me into the cafeteria... and they'd made a birthday party for me!! Sara made papa a la huancaína and the kids brought soda and chicha. Then we danced to the radio while half the kids disappeared out the door to run around the school. Sara doesn't have a lot of control over the class, but she knows how to make you feel special. :)
Later in the afternoon I went to sing with Iris's youth group from the school. I always teach them the songs I learn from my friends in the parish, and they like to sing when they give mini-retreats for the younger kids in school. I loved it, and I realized how much I really miss singing with groups and leading music, since my choirs have been so out of wack lately at the school. Anyway it was a good break from the house, hanging out with teenagers for a while instead of with the sisters who (with all my love and respect) are all at least old enough to be my mother. (except Miriam.)
Then I had a WONDERFUL meeting with the 5th grade teachers and Gaby, and at least in theory, we are now all on the same page; I'm giving the kids grades and they are sending them to me rather than making me go get them. I'm hoping it really works.
And in the evening, Magda straightened out my energy with energy medicine. While she did her energy-flow-corrections, I lay with my eyes closed thinking about the things that stress me: non-functional work in the school, people ringing the doorbell, communication problems in our house, my friends in the parish acting cliquey in a way I haven't seen since high school. At the end Magda said, All your energy flow points were blocked, except one: the central one just below your ribs and deep inside, the one that represents your connection with God. That one was flowing just fine. This surprised me, and yet did not. I'm often very, very frustrated here, and yet I do feel I'm where I'm supposed to be for now.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Why does the concept of scheduling not exist here?
Disclaimer: the following is a complaint session.
It's much harder to keep volunteer projects going than I really feel like it should be.
My trip kind of messed things up. I was just getting started with things, or rather, just starting to have some continuity, and then I had to be gone for a week and a half. And it's not that a week and a half is very long. But in Peru, once you tell people you're going to be gone for a while, they pretty much forget about you until further notice. That is, although I said to a lot of people repeatedly, The next class is on this date... I'll be back to work with the kids on Friday the 23rd... they were not, so to speak, expecting me or ready for my arrival. My private students did not show up on the day I'd said class would resume. The excuse: "Oh, well since I wasn't sure if you were back yet..." I have to call them, go find them, practically pull them by the ear to get them back into the routine we had so carefully set up. It just makes them seem completely irresponsible, like they don't care at all about what we're doing and are just coming because they're bored.
And don't get me started about the 5th grade teachers. In order to rehearse with that choir, every time I go--and I always go at the same time every Tuesday and Friday!--I have to argue, fight, plead, insist, practically drag the students out of the classroom by the hair in order to get them all into a rehearsal space. That is not my job. My job is to teach them to sing. Last Thursday I had a meeting with the teachers to try to agree on a different schedule, and the 2 out of 3 that actually came agreed that 3 to 3:30 pm was better than 5 to 5:30, because one of them could not possibly move his tests any earlier in the day, he always gives them during the last hour, etc. So then I went in the next day thinking this was all established--and he hadn't even told the kids about the time change! So naturally:
Me: Hi, everybody, time for choir! New time, hooray, now we can finally rehearse, right?
Kids: Huh? What? I haven't finished my work! I'm going to lose the points! Aah! Señorita, I'm dropping choir!
Every time I come they tell me this, and every time I come I promise to work it out with the teacher. Then I talk to the teachers, and they tell me in the meeting that the kids don't finish in the time given them because they fool around and work slowly and don't have discipline. So then, yes, when choir time arrives the kids have permission to go, but they know they have to prioritize, because they haven't finished their work. (This is true. When I go into these classrooms, the kids are often off the wall, walking around, talking, not doing anything, and the teacher yelling to be heard or else distracted by a small group wanting individual attention in a corner.)--I wasn't sure how to respond to that, because the only thing that occurred to me to say was, Who's the adult and who's the ten-year-old?! It's YOUR job as the teacher to make them sit down in their seats, stop talking, do their work, and finish it! You think the KIDS should be the ones responsible for disciplining themselves to work to a deadline and stick to a schedule?? YOU need to take some responsibility, take control of your classroom, teach some discipline to these kids, make them do what they're supposed to do when they're supposed to do it, and learn to respect a fixed schedule and stick to it!!
But I thought that might not be tactful.
So I went and complained to the vice-principal, Gaby, and there's another meeting this Friday. This time with Gaby present. And Gaby has the excellent idea that the teachers are now going to be responsible for SENDING the kids to ME, at the SAME TIME EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY, and making sure that they have that space available free from the stress of missing important work. It's not too much to ask, trust me. It's half an hour twice a week, at the times THEY THEMSELVES have chosen. It's just a matter of them getting themselves together and actually doing what they've said they'll do according to the schedule they've said they'll do it on.
People who can actually be counted on to do this are gold in Peru. They exist, but they're rare, and they're the only kind you want to be working with. Try working with any other variety and the whole project just gets messed up, bent out of shape, becomes something it was never intended to be, and in the end stops happening. And then everybody goes, Oh, well, I guess not. Next time, for sure.
I just feel like whenever I go into the school ready and willing to help, I get told to go away and come back another day. The 6th grade teacher whose students I'm supposedly tutoring in reading had told me Wednesdays were good, but when I came back from my trip and showed up on a Wednesday, surprise! they weren't doing reading. They were doing a grammar lesson on adverbs. So the teacher hands me her lesson plan, which she had very thoughtfully copied for me, and was ready to let me take a group of kids away to teach them the exact same thing she was teaching them in the classroom. I was like, um, that's not the point. YOU can teach them what you're teaching them. I want to do DIFFERENT things, but still working on reading, so that when they're missing your reading lesson they're getting mine. She said, Tuesdays are better than Wednesdays. Come on Tuesday.
The only thing working in terms of me and the school, is Liliana and the Adelante class. And that's because Sara has no structure whatsoever to her mornings with the students, so I can come and read whatever I want with Liliana whenever it's convenient.
It's much harder to keep volunteer projects going than I really feel like it should be.
My trip kind of messed things up. I was just getting started with things, or rather, just starting to have some continuity, and then I had to be gone for a week and a half. And it's not that a week and a half is very long. But in Peru, once you tell people you're going to be gone for a while, they pretty much forget about you until further notice. That is, although I said to a lot of people repeatedly, The next class is on this date... I'll be back to work with the kids on Friday the 23rd... they were not, so to speak, expecting me or ready for my arrival. My private students did not show up on the day I'd said class would resume. The excuse: "Oh, well since I wasn't sure if you were back yet..." I have to call them, go find them, practically pull them by the ear to get them back into the routine we had so carefully set up. It just makes them seem completely irresponsible, like they don't care at all about what we're doing and are just coming because they're bored.
And don't get me started about the 5th grade teachers. In order to rehearse with that choir, every time I go--and I always go at the same time every Tuesday and Friday!--I have to argue, fight, plead, insist, practically drag the students out of the classroom by the hair in order to get them all into a rehearsal space. That is not my job. My job is to teach them to sing. Last Thursday I had a meeting with the teachers to try to agree on a different schedule, and the 2 out of 3 that actually came agreed that 3 to 3:30 pm was better than 5 to 5:30, because one of them could not possibly move his tests any earlier in the day, he always gives them during the last hour, etc. So then I went in the next day thinking this was all established--and he hadn't even told the kids about the time change! So naturally:
Me: Hi, everybody, time for choir! New time, hooray, now we can finally rehearse, right?
Kids: Huh? What? I haven't finished my work! I'm going to lose the points! Aah! Señorita, I'm dropping choir!
Every time I come they tell me this, and every time I come I promise to work it out with the teacher. Then I talk to the teachers, and they tell me in the meeting that the kids don't finish in the time given them because they fool around and work slowly and don't have discipline. So then, yes, when choir time arrives the kids have permission to go, but they know they have to prioritize, because they haven't finished their work. (This is true. When I go into these classrooms, the kids are often off the wall, walking around, talking, not doing anything, and the teacher yelling to be heard or else distracted by a small group wanting individual attention in a corner.)--I wasn't sure how to respond to that, because the only thing that occurred to me to say was, Who's the adult and who's the ten-year-old?! It's YOUR job as the teacher to make them sit down in their seats, stop talking, do their work, and finish it! You think the KIDS should be the ones responsible for disciplining themselves to work to a deadline and stick to a schedule?? YOU need to take some responsibility, take control of your classroom, teach some discipline to these kids, make them do what they're supposed to do when they're supposed to do it, and learn to respect a fixed schedule and stick to it!!
But I thought that might not be tactful.
So I went and complained to the vice-principal, Gaby, and there's another meeting this Friday. This time with Gaby present. And Gaby has the excellent idea that the teachers are now going to be responsible for SENDING the kids to ME, at the SAME TIME EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY, and making sure that they have that space available free from the stress of missing important work. It's not too much to ask, trust me. It's half an hour twice a week, at the times THEY THEMSELVES have chosen. It's just a matter of them getting themselves together and actually doing what they've said they'll do according to the schedule they've said they'll do it on.
People who can actually be counted on to do this are gold in Peru. They exist, but they're rare, and they're the only kind you want to be working with. Try working with any other variety and the whole project just gets messed up, bent out of shape, becomes something it was never intended to be, and in the end stops happening. And then everybody goes, Oh, well, I guess not. Next time, for sure.
I just feel like whenever I go into the school ready and willing to help, I get told to go away and come back another day. The 6th grade teacher whose students I'm supposedly tutoring in reading had told me Wednesdays were good, but when I came back from my trip and showed up on a Wednesday, surprise! they weren't doing reading. They were doing a grammar lesson on adverbs. So the teacher hands me her lesson plan, which she had very thoughtfully copied for me, and was ready to let me take a group of kids away to teach them the exact same thing she was teaching them in the classroom. I was like, um, that's not the point. YOU can teach them what you're teaching them. I want to do DIFFERENT things, but still working on reading, so that when they're missing your reading lesson they're getting mine. She said, Tuesdays are better than Wednesdays. Come on Tuesday.
The only thing working in terms of me and the school, is Liliana and the Adelante class. And that's because Sara has no structure whatsoever to her mornings with the students, so I can come and read whatever I want with Liliana whenever it's convenient.
Friday, May 23, 2008
some pictures
In May I went home for a week and a half and it was delicious. I went to Jamie's graduation, Jen and Matt's wedding, and hung out with friends and family, especially for my birthday and Mother's Day. And everything was GREEN! Like THIS:
a guy and a mototaxi coming down the road
eating soup after church for a parish fundraiser (this picture actually taken by Sister Edna last year, but we did it again this year)
Appreciate your green, people. It is one of the things you regard as normal, but the people here don't necessarily get to enjoy. Kind of like indoor heating, a fully constructed house, a washing machine, stoves and ovens you don't have to light with a match, sunny days during winter, paved roads, non-junkpile-worthy cars, etc.
That said... here are some long overdue pictures of my dear Chorrillos. My apologies for the lack of visual journalism so far this year.
a guy and a mototaxi coming down the road eating soup after church for a parish fundraiser (this picture actually taken by Sister Edna last year, but we did it again this year)
The market! It looks much prettier on a sunny day
this is where I buy chicken. 
Construction! They're turning the soccer pitch into a stadium.
Our laundry hanging out to dry between the house and the parish multipurpose room 
Teresa, Magdalena, and Iris outside my favorite ice cream store
Me and Teresa in front of the ocean at the Malecón de Huaylas.Thursday, May 1, 2008
Project updates
My first few posts this year have been so out of the ordinary that I haven't written much about what normal life is actually like here. Let's see.
Most of my time is divided between musical activities and teaching English. In terms of music, I am LOVING my fourth and fifth grade choirs in Fe y Alegría. The fourth graders started off with terrible behavior, talking while I was talking, talking while they were supposedly singing, running around and falling on the floor and hanging on each other and messing up the chairs instead of coming into my rehearsal space like civilized people. (I rehearse with them either in the auditorium, the library, or the chapel, depending on which space is available, and I always go early to set up the chairs in a half-circle, which they they proceed to destroy... It works better in the library where there's less space to move the chairs in.) They seem to be getting the idea of how I expect this group to work. Two weeks ago I gave them a good ten-minute talking-to about paying attention, working together, taking the choir seriously--and then started carrying out my threats to send people who misbehaved back to class, and it worked wonders. I guess they thought I wasn't serious before.
Since they have very good ears, they're way ahead of where last year's fourth graders were at this time. I'm trying to prepare them to sing a round for the Mother's Day performances... without me, because I'm taking my vacation time in the US from May 8th-19th! It hurts me to abandon my little pollitos, but I suppose it's worth it in order to go to Jamie's graduaton, Jen and Matt's wedding, see my mom for Mother's Day, spend my birthday at home, and see Maryland in spring again... (sigh of nostalgia.) Fifth grade will help the 4th graders with the round, anyway, and I'm leaving a 10th grade student in charge of saying, 1, 2, 3, go. He's preparing a little harmony on the zampoña (Andean pan pipes) that will go before and after the kiddies sing their round (later when I'm actually there to facilitate, he'll play it with them.)
With fifth grade, I have problems with attendance, because the kids feel stressed out because they miss their work. The teachers have told me that they won't do anything important during those hours, and every time I go to talk to them they say, Oh, yes, of course they can miss, it's no problem, normally we won't have group work on Fridays, it was just for today... But the kids still feel a lot of pressure almost every week to finish things they're missing. Grr. I need to talk to the vice-principal about it. Fifth grade is pure fun once they're there, though. Yesterday when our time was up, they all started saying, No, no, One more time! One more time! and then they asked me to sing them Oh Holy Night, which (thanks to last year's Christmas event in the church) was printed on the same page as their Virgen de Guadalupe song. I didn't, but it was really cute anyway. And then they all come up to kiss me on the cheek and say, Chau, Señorita! Tuesdays and Fridays from 4:30 to 5:50 is my favorite favorite time of the week. :)
My second-favorite job is probably my advanced English conversation group, a collection of friends and Caty's students from last year, which meets at my house in Tupac on Saturday and Sunday mornings. This is great because I just sit around talking my language with people, and they get to practice and ask me questions, and it's a bit of socializing outside the school. It's been harder for me this year to connect with other young people... probably because my social organizer decided not to renew her volunteer service ;), and because I'm busier, and my friends seem busier too. But last weekend, in full Peruvian style, every social event imaginable happened from the 25th to the 27th, after what felt like the whole month of April sitting at home on Saturday nights with nothing to do and no one to go out with. There were two birthday parties, a prayer group, a movie followed by live musica criolla and dancing, shopping (in the market of Tupac with Sister BJ for a cute little black dancing shirt!), conversation group, and a party with the sisters for Magda, who has recently gotten certified as an Energy Medicine practitioner. (aka: Jedi. Just so you know, I will be becoming her in the future. And then I will open a business at the Renaissance Fair, Rowena ye Energie Healer, and wear an awesome shimmery dress and unblock the flow of people's energy for money.) I slept a total of 11 hours from Friday to Sunday but it was worth it.
Then there's the church choir, as always. There's my students who come to the house on Tuesdays and Thursdays for guitar lessons (three 19- or 20-year-old girls who are really sweet) and English (José Osco who's moving to Australia and takes his English very seriously.) And Liliana, who I tutor in reading and writing in the special-ed program two mornings a week. Those kids are even more affectionate and even more terribly behaved than my fourth-grade choir. Every time I walk in, they scream, Señorita Catalina!!! and during their class they write me cards with little pictures and messages like, "Señorita Catalina, you are very beautiful, you are like my mother and you teach English very well" (I have never taught them any English, but they always ask me to speak it) "and you teach Liliana to read. Señorita Catalina I love you with all my heart thank you for coming and you are very pretty" etc.
Me, Sara, and the Adelante class. The one on my lap is Liliana.
Sara, their teacher, says that many of them come from broken families and are looking for affection that they don't get at home. Before starting the class, they get their school breakfast, a roll and a mug of Quaker, and Sara leads them in some prayers, which they really like. It seems to calm them and bring them together as a group. The kids are also constantly asking me if I'm married, if I have children, or if I'm going to get married. Last week Liliana told her teacher, "Señorita Sara, tell Señorita Catalina to marry a man!" I asked her, "What man, Liliana? Tell me that!" and she said with an air of exasperation, "A hot one, of course!!" (¡Con un hombre guapo, pues!)
(Quaker by the way is Peruvian-style oatmeal; the name comes from the brand name Quaker Oats, but the Peruvians pronounce it with the short A as in ball, "Quakker." They mix about 1 part oatmeal to 10 parts water and boil it with a ton of sugar, cloves, and cinnamon until it gets thick and soupy, and you don't eat it with a spoon, you drink it. It's delicious.)
Meanwhile, until Liliana brings me my hot man, I'm enjoying my role of temporary nun. I've implied to various Peruvian guys that I might enter the convent in the future, when it seemed like a good idea. And considering how much I like being here, I won't say that I was lying. One never knows about the future. But for now, I've realized that since two years is a long time, I have to live my life while I'm here in terms of going out with friends, having fun, seeing Lima, taking advantage of being here, instead of trying to devote 100% of my time to service.
Most of my time is divided between musical activities and teaching English. In terms of music, I am LOVING my fourth and fifth grade choirs in Fe y Alegría. The fourth graders started off with terrible behavior, talking while I was talking, talking while they were supposedly singing, running around and falling on the floor and hanging on each other and messing up the chairs instead of coming into my rehearsal space like civilized people. (I rehearse with them either in the auditorium, the library, or the chapel, depending on which space is available, and I always go early to set up the chairs in a half-circle, which they they proceed to destroy... It works better in the library where there's less space to move the chairs in.) They seem to be getting the idea of how I expect this group to work. Two weeks ago I gave them a good ten-minute talking-to about paying attention, working together, taking the choir seriously--and then started carrying out my threats to send people who misbehaved back to class, and it worked wonders. I guess they thought I wasn't serious before.
Since they have very good ears, they're way ahead of where last year's fourth graders were at this time. I'm trying to prepare them to sing a round for the Mother's Day performances... without me, because I'm taking my vacation time in the US from May 8th-19th! It hurts me to abandon my little pollitos, but I suppose it's worth it in order to go to Jamie's graduaton, Jen and Matt's wedding, see my mom for Mother's Day, spend my birthday at home, and see Maryland in spring again... (sigh of nostalgia.) Fifth grade will help the 4th graders with the round, anyway, and I'm leaving a 10th grade student in charge of saying, 1, 2, 3, go. He's preparing a little harmony on the zampoña (Andean pan pipes) that will go before and after the kiddies sing their round (later when I'm actually there to facilitate, he'll play it with them.)
With fifth grade, I have problems with attendance, because the kids feel stressed out because they miss their work. The teachers have told me that they won't do anything important during those hours, and every time I go to talk to them they say, Oh, yes, of course they can miss, it's no problem, normally we won't have group work on Fridays, it was just for today... But the kids still feel a lot of pressure almost every week to finish things they're missing. Grr. I need to talk to the vice-principal about it. Fifth grade is pure fun once they're there, though. Yesterday when our time was up, they all started saying, No, no, One more time! One more time! and then they asked me to sing them Oh Holy Night, which (thanks to last year's Christmas event in the church) was printed on the same page as their Virgen de Guadalupe song. I didn't, but it was really cute anyway. And then they all come up to kiss me on the cheek and say, Chau, Señorita! Tuesdays and Fridays from 4:30 to 5:50 is my favorite favorite time of the week. :)
My second-favorite job is probably my advanced English conversation group, a collection of friends and Caty's students from last year, which meets at my house in Tupac on Saturday and Sunday mornings. This is great because I just sit around talking my language with people, and they get to practice and ask me questions, and it's a bit of socializing outside the school. It's been harder for me this year to connect with other young people... probably because my social organizer decided not to renew her volunteer service ;), and because I'm busier, and my friends seem busier too. But last weekend, in full Peruvian style, every social event imaginable happened from the 25th to the 27th, after what felt like the whole month of April sitting at home on Saturday nights with nothing to do and no one to go out with. There were two birthday parties, a prayer group, a movie followed by live musica criolla and dancing, shopping (in the market of Tupac with Sister BJ for a cute little black dancing shirt!), conversation group, and a party with the sisters for Magda, who has recently gotten certified as an Energy Medicine practitioner. (aka: Jedi. Just so you know, I will be becoming her in the future. And then I will open a business at the Renaissance Fair, Rowena ye Energie Healer, and wear an awesome shimmery dress and unblock the flow of people's energy for money.) I slept a total of 11 hours from Friday to Sunday but it was worth it.
Then there's the church choir, as always. There's my students who come to the house on Tuesdays and Thursdays for guitar lessons (three 19- or 20-year-old girls who are really sweet) and English (José Osco who's moving to Australia and takes his English very seriously.) And Liliana, who I tutor in reading and writing in the special-ed program two mornings a week. Those kids are even more affectionate and even more terribly behaved than my fourth-grade choir. Every time I walk in, they scream, Señorita Catalina!!! and during their class they write me cards with little pictures and messages like, "Señorita Catalina, you are very beautiful, you are like my mother and you teach English very well" (I have never taught them any English, but they always ask me to speak it) "and you teach Liliana to read. Señorita Catalina I love you with all my heart thank you for coming and you are very pretty" etc.
Me, Sara, and the Adelante class. The one on my lap is Liliana.
Sara, their teacher, says that many of them come from broken families and are looking for affection that they don't get at home. Before starting the class, they get their school breakfast, a roll and a mug of Quaker, and Sara leads them in some prayers, which they really like. It seems to calm them and bring them together as a group. The kids are also constantly asking me if I'm married, if I have children, or if I'm going to get married. Last week Liliana told her teacher, "Señorita Sara, tell Señorita Catalina to marry a man!" I asked her, "What man, Liliana? Tell me that!" and she said with an air of exasperation, "A hot one, of course!!" (¡Con un hombre guapo, pues!)
(Quaker by the way is Peruvian-style oatmeal; the name comes from the brand name Quaker Oats, but the Peruvians pronounce it with the short A as in ball, "Quakker." They mix about 1 part oatmeal to 10 parts water and boil it with a ton of sugar, cloves, and cinnamon until it gets thick and soupy, and you don't eat it with a spoon, you drink it. It's delicious.)
Meanwhile, until Liliana brings me my hot man, I'm enjoying my role of temporary nun. I've implied to various Peruvian guys that I might enter the convent in the future, when it seemed like a good idea. And considering how much I like being here, I won't say that I was lying. One never knows about the future. But for now, I've realized that since two years is a long time, I have to live my life while I'm here in terms of going out with friends, having fun, seeing Lima, taking advantage of being here, instead of trying to devote 100% of my time to service.
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