La Escuela en la Montaña

After lunch we all went to the mountain school to teach the kids there.  We went in a bus up there and it is amazing.  Mari, Tino's wife, was telling me that all of the kids live up in the mountains by the school.  She said they are "inquietos," which in a nice way would be full of life and in another way would be troublemakers.  :)  There are three classrooms and the kids are broken up into three classes.  One of the volunteers from Germany really wanted to teach math, so he has a class full of the kids who want to learn math.  I was paired with Emil, the volunteer from Iceland.  It was sort of hard to teach with two people in the room, or maybe it was just because he tended to take over the class.  I suppose it was just a conflict of teaching styles.  After the class we went out to play with the kids.  Some of them were painting their nails, even the boys.  The girls even painted both of the male volunteers' nails.  We were laughing at them at dinner with their pretty nails.  I eventually ended up playing volleyball with a bunch of the kids and I am really bad at it, but they were all nice to me and told me I was doing well.

After we finished playing volleyball, the kids went to brush their teeth.  We bring toothbrushes and toothpaste for them.  They don't usually brush their teeth because there is not enough clean water.  I was sitting down and watching the kids and one of the older girls who had been playing volleyball on my team sat down by me and started asking me all kinds of questions: where I was from, how old I was, what my parents' names were, what my profession was, did I live with my parents, etc.  The thing I think I liked the most was that when we got there and when we left almost all of the kids gave us kisses and hugs and said, "Bye, teacher," or "Bye, Miss."

After we left, Lauren, Ilva, Emil and I went to a market in town where they sell all kinds of arts and crafts and jewelry.  I bought a pretty, purple scarf for about 7 dollars.  I love it!  I think I might come back with a suitcase full of scarves!  We bought tickets to the movies and so we are going in a few minutes!  Fun!