Friday Jan 11,2012

Sorry it has been a little time since my last blog.  The internet and phones went down on Monday and this is the first day back.  So it is Friday afternoon and I am at the colegio sitting outside the principal's office since it is cooler here.  It is so nice to have internet service again.  In this case even wireless.

On Monday we got up and all went to the home of Marta.  She lives close by and is also the Principal of the school.  John and Cathy Tucker are staying there.  The rest of us in two different houses.

Marta's little nome is cement block but new.  She is only renting it.  She is 28 years old and does have a 2 year old child.  The house is clean but open.  The lighting however is very dim. Just one bulb in the large living room where we all ate.  She does not have a washing machine or internet. Just a TV.  Marta makes about $400.00 per month for 11 months at the Colegio.  Not really enough, even for her

To begin with there were the 7 of us and what the Padre does is bring other women and girls that are usually living in the same house with him going to school along with some of the children.

Because of all of this help the meals are always good and on time.  Breakfast at 7 then lunch at 1 and then supper at 6.  He has always made sure we were always well fed.  This time it is no exception.

The plan was to have two classes a day for 2 hours.  8-10 and then 10:30 to 12:30.  The early class was for those in the 3,4,5 and the rest were for the 6 7 8th.

This first day all of the children came.  There were about 100 in total.  The Padre kicked off the meeting and said a prayer.  I already forgot what we did that first day.  But it included songs, and playing some games.

After class and lunch the Padre, he left to be with the Pilgrims from Youngstown.  His plan was to be gone through Wednesday night.    We then made the plans for the next day.

The general idea was to have prayer, some group activity some outside exercise ant then a break out session where we concentrated on a special area for each class in a review of their English skills.

Remember they do have a full time English teacher.  Her name is Fatima.  She lives in Aqua Caliente and besides teaching works in the small dry goods store in the front of her home with her father and sister.  She is 25 years old and is a product of the scholarship program that was set up by the people of Kent and I believe those of Geneva ohio.  In any case her English is good.  So this is the first year that the kids have had a full time English teacher.  She has very good English workbooks for the kids and I hope this will really help getting these kids efficiency up.

The classes on Tuesday through Friday consisted of learning the Lords Prayer, the Hail Mary and a very hard one  We Are The World.  The plan for this song is to sing it to the Padre on the last day.  Other ideas that were used were to have the kids do a Bio of them selves and read it to the class.  We also played a game called Word-O and then play an animal bingo game. So there were a lot of activities. My break class so far has focused on reviewing with them the present tense with the pronouns and then the verb ToBe and adding ING onto the active nouns.  Do not know if the 3rd graders going into fourth will be able to understand this but I am giving it a shot.  We also in all of the classes focus on pronunciation.  This is always necessary. Oh yeah, the recess time was occupied by doing exercises and playing the Hokey-Pokey and some other games of throwing a ball between their legs.  All the kids seemed to enjoy these games a lot.  These games were conducted by Bob Stabilus.  He is a retired professor from Kent State.


And so the week has come and gone.  In the meantime, Janet Stabilus started getting some type of infection in her jaw.  It got worse on Wednesday and finally she went to San Salvador on Thursday to see a Specialist.  It was decided that she and her husband Bob would go home on Saturday.  This is the best for her health.  Also on Wednesday it was the birthday of Marta.  The person whos house we eat at. She was 28 and so we surprised her with a big cake we bought in town and of course a few bottles of beer and a little cash.  She was very happy.  She said that she has not celebrated very many birthdays in her life. She said the only other one was when she was 21 years old.  That got me thinking of the all of the birthdays of my own grandchildren.  Although I am happy for them I wonder if all of the time and expense of having these lavish birthdays is really the thing to do.  When you are in this place it just changes one perspective as to what is important in life.

Because of the illness of Janet the Padre was always driving back and forth from other places and finally made it happen that Janet should go home.  He was here on Thursday night however.  That night we had some guests. The man was about 40 and was visiting here from Nantucket.  He is Salvadorian and has been in the US for 19 years.  He came illegally but has had a Green Card for many years.  His girlfriend lives here.  He really does not know if he will even be a citizen of the US but still keeps hoping.  It makes you wonder when we will ever get our migration policy figured out in our country.  It is really a complete mess.  Again a very nice, hardworking person.  He works on the maintenance crew at the Boston airport.  Seems very happy with this job and even owns a little house.  Of course he could be shipped back to El Salvador at any time.  He says that God only knows what will happen and he will accept what ever happens.

As I said we bought a cake for Marta at a local bakery.  Of course when we went in there were two people we spoke to.  One worked for the local government.  He says that he is ambulance driver for the town.  He takes people to the nearest hospital which is at least 45 minutes away.  Of course he was in the US for 2 or 3 years and had to come back.  Another man there was in his 60's and has lived in the US for about 25 years.  He has houses there and here and of course family.  Not a citizen but has a Green Card.

One other thing was that is was Cathy Tucker's birthday today.  This is always a big deal here.  Maurico who will be the assistant principal this year plays a guitar and all of the teachers came in during the break and sang Happy Birthday.  It was not just our old familiar tune.  I had never heard it before.  It was called La Manunita.  Spelling is not right but it was something that is sung all of the time at birthdays.  It has beautiful words of a nice morning and of god.  I have the words and will try to learn it soon.

Saturday we will meet in the morning and plan the class for Monday.  Then it is time to meet with the Padre for a trip at 2:00 PM to the town of Reyna..  This is another town that the Padre serves as Priest.  We all will stay over night there.  I am told it is high in the mountains and it is cool.  That will feel good.  The only question will be will I be ridding the the back of the truck and will the road be curvey and full of holes.  More than likely it will be, but that is ok.  This is El Salvador, the people are beautiful  and friendly but the circumstances of where they live make it difficult to take care of one's family just like every one in this world tries to do.

Thanks for reading my blog.  I hope you find it inspiring.