Happy 30 years to my darling husband..we met 30 years ago today at
Teen World USA in Redding CA and have been together ever since! I was
greeted to a surprise phone call from Paul wishing me "happy 30
years", I was thrilled and ashamed to admit it, I not only didn't know
todays date was but hadn't even remembered!! I am so glad he
remembered and called me, really made my ordinary Sunday special.
Anyways, I really thought this past week would shape up to be nothing
but school, boring! A lot of it was, but things improved on Friday.
First, after not really having much homework for a week or so, that
completely changed, I now have about 5 assignments to work on over
the weekend all due next Monday, Tues or Wednesday. 3 essays and bunch
of reading!! Not that homework is really a improvement but the other stuff that follows was the exciting part.
Friday was my internship, I took my bus to Unarte as usual, and as I
walked up to the school, I see my supervisor, Maricarmen leaving in
her car! I yell out her name, she sees me and says for me to get into
the taxi that some students are getting into. Off we go and I have no
idea to where!! Soon we approach at large private high school named,
American School. Which coincidentally is where all the grand kids of
my host family go to school, but only one is in high school, the rest the kids
are in the lower grades at different campuses. Soon I am helping set
up a display table. Unarte is part of a college fair being hosted at
the high school. Mostly I visited with Maricarmen and help with
setting up and tear down of the display. Afterwards, she drove me out
to one of the larger universities here, I can't remember the name
though. The campus is quite large, looks like about 5-6000 attend. Has
all the sporting facilities, including a US style football field. Then
back to Unarte to unload all the stuff. Then I was free to go! So I
walked to zocolo just to see what there is to see, took me 45 mins or
so. Then I decided to figure out my way home on the bus. I only got
lost once but the driver pointed to where I needed to go and so I
found the correct bus and made it back home.
Yesterday (Sat.), Mercedes, my host Esmeralda's cousin, who works for
a non-profit agency, asked me if I would be interested in teaching
English to some students on Sunday's. All the students are from very
rural areas, indigenous and very poor. Her agency gathers up the
financial resources and gives these kids 100% scholarship to come here
to go to university. There is about 30 of them, they all live together
in 2 houses (3 kids to a room) and I will be going out to their houses
and I guess, sit in a room and teach or converse in English to whoever
is interested! I am thrilled and I start next weekend. Apparently,
they are all in English classes at their university but they are in
their first year, so none of them speak English. All the kids speak
Spanish and some speak their native indigenous language as well.
I told Mercedes I was very excited about doing this, then asked her
how to say 'excited' in Spanish, she told me that if I said "excitado"
in Spanish it would mean "excited in the romantic way". Oops.. so the
way to say excited in Spanish is "emotionado" emotional! Another new
word and culture tidbit learned.
Today, I was surprised by Esmeralda, she invited me to go out
sightseeing a little. She took me to the central part of the city, but
we went to the part of city that is the very oldest. So we visited a
mall where they have taken the old walls from the 1800's factory and
incorporated them into modern buildings. It was amazing, basically the
frame of the entire mall is the original brick walls from a 1800's
tannery factory. What was the coolest, was this huge glass area in
the floor of the mall and beneath it revealed rooms of the tannery
and stuff that was dug out during the archaeology excavations years
ago. So you can see where the tannery workers worked, the tools and even a water
system. It was like a museum under the floor of the mall! It was
really fascinating and interesting. After visiting the mall we walked
around a bit, wandered across the street to a little restaurant with a
live jazz band where we enjoyed the music and lunch. The area around
the restaurant seemed to be the art district. Paintings, drawings, and
other art were displayed and for sale up and down the street. I am
planning to go back another day!
Time to get back to my tarea (homework)…it is always looming….
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