enough

I realized today that whenever I am describing something here it´s ALWAYS followed by the word enough...
Like after a shower. Feeling Clean? Clean Enough. Which actually means I couldnt stay under the freezing water for long enough to get a good scrub in. Or Í´m clean despite the dirt engrained in my feet. Or I got clean but am already sweating and sticky. Clean Enough.
Or when describing the food, its good enough. At school this usually means despite the bones in that they forgot to take out. Or despite the fact that I cant figure out what it is. Or despite the fact that I got a hoof instead of meat. Or despite the fact that its the same thing as ever other day. Good Enough.
Or how on a good day, my class is quiet enough. Which actually means I could hear myself yelling unlike most days. The sad thing is most of the time they arent even quiet enough.
Or worst of all when the work is correct enough. Spelling errors, misarranged words and unconjugated verbs... If you can mostly understand a sentence, its correct enough! (Dont get me wrong we do encourage proper english, but I try to work on one grammar aspect at a time).

Anyway, toda was a pretty frusterating beginning to the week. After planning alot to do with them it was a huge stuggle to get them to stop fighting, talking and wandering long enough to accomplish anything! But theres always tomorrow!

Mellow

Well, its the end of another relaxing weekend and the beginning of anothing wild week. Last week was the first full fove day weeks we´ve had for over a month! And despite the pressure of working that hard (compared to the chill lifestyle of gotten used to here) it was good to actually get something accomplished!
In english we´ve been working on past tense verbs (regular and then memorizing irregular). After a full week of flash cards, races, worksheets... I had them write sentences about what they did last summer. I was feeling like for the most part the kids understood it. Then, out of the blue, one of my kids proudly handed in the sentence "Last summer, I slept on my cousin" and I completely lost it. I marked it right for him because I was about to try and explain that one.
I´m really enjoying it here and I think it´s mostly because of the other volunteers. There are 10 of us now and we´ve gotten really close. We take trips together, laugh at the ridiculous things our kids say, try and meet more locals, go dancing, laugh at the strange inbred animals wandering the streets (sheepgoats, midget cows, warrior cocks...), try and keep track of the web of everyone being related around here (its really messed up, pretty much everyone is related to everyone and if you´re over 14 you have a kid)... Anyway, we´ve created a strange little family amoungst ourselves and its going to be wierd to leave it! You definately get sucked into this world!

Normal?

Well, life in Cofradia is tranquilo as usual. But despite how mellow it is, you get used to it reallly fast. This weekend we went to our local merengue bar/restaurant/dance floor to celebrate one of the volunteers birthday. Which despite how unclassy the whole thing is (its a shack on a dirt road), proves to be a ton of fun everytime because you can kick back and dance without a care in the world! And other than that I spent alot of time doing laundry. Seeing as its done by hand, laundry is a full day, painful activity.
Tomorrow I´m heading back to school and hoping to get more done with less interruptions (we always seem to have surprise days off for things life a professional development day which turned into a shopping trip with the principal).
I´m finding it hard to write recently because everything here seems normal to me, not really noteworthy. But then again when I think about it I catch myself doing and saying ridiculous things like ¨Victor, put down the cinderblock and come to class¨. Or how they deal with things.. For example they principal forgot to pay the power bill at the school, so that day they sent home a letter saying it was colour day tomorrow (dont wear your uniform but pay 5 lemps) and collected money to pay the bill. Or seeing animals that you cant tell what they are because they hae the body of a goat with sheep wool. Its amazing how quickly you can meld into things that are so far from what you´re used to and begin to see everything as normal!

Guatemala

Well I just got back yesterday from 5 awesome days in Guatemala! It was such a nice change of pace, and although we were mostly in tourist areas you can definately tell a difference in the people! We started in Antigua (which I LOVE and could definately live in), headed to the hippie town panajachel, kayaked on lake atitlan (an imploded volcanoe, surrounded by 3 other volcanoes and many mountians), shopped in the largest market in central america (chichicastenago). Mostly the trip was wandering around, eating good food (a nice change!) and bartering for christmas gifts.
Although I loved the places, the people and the whole trip it was certainly nice to get back home to our crappy little town. And especially nice to get back to the frusterating days with my grade fours. We´ve just finished exams.. so now at least I know what level my students are at. Which leaves me at the frusterating point of how to deal with the stranglers (some kids have little or no comprehensions of english and therefore dont understand anything thats going on) and how to keep the bright ones moving.