Woooo... Sup damas and caballeros,
So, yup. I don't even know what to say. There's so much going on in my brain right now that there's no telling where things start and where things end.
I seriously need an agenda. I've been double booking things and it's not looking good.
Whatevs. So I finally went to talk to the health post. It took me a month, but I decided that was long enough. Yaeel (the volunteer who was here before me) left me with a set of forearm crutches to donate and armed with that as an excuse to visit, I marched in. I asked the pharmacy where I could find one of the nurses, the only name I recalled from when I had visited during site visit. Thankfully, she was there and remembered me. I explained that I was there to see if they would accept the donation (they would) and got to talking with the director. She then explained that right next door was another office that does... something. I'm still not sure. In any case, I went and saw a woman that I had actually met before. She was super excited to see me and we got to talking. After I introduced myself to everyone and we talked for about an hour or two, I left to go find that gym.
THAT ELUSIVE GYM!!!
I found it but it wasn't open. Le Sigh. Later that night, I was told that my host mom is actually friends with the woman who owns it, so I asked her to please let the woman know that I would like to work out, so if she could open the doors at some point and let me know when, that would be awesome.
Anyway, I went back today to see this lady and BOOM, got a few things rolling.
Starting in October, I'm going to be teaching English. There's this really nice space hidden inside the office. This is actually true of most of my site. The exteriors all look exactly the same- painted cement and a door. However, get invited to step inside and woooooaaahhh. There's a lot of stuff happening inside.
The space I have been invited to use can seat about 40 people comfortably, another 40 more in the kitchen area, and there's an open space that I can use for dinámicas and things. I'll be leading two classes a week, one for younger kids and one for older adolescents. I'm also going to be using this space for my hopefully one day rejoined youth group (they were supposed to meet me today, but today's día de la juventud and they were all busy dancing and partying at their schools so they didn't show up... womp womp).
Finally, I'm going to see if there's any interest in forming a theater group as well as starting an escuela de padres. I'll be handing out surveys next week to assess all of this, and hopefully I get enough responses to have something mildly substantial to use.
Short update, just because I'm about to run out again. I went to one school this morning to celebrate the day, and watched the teachers be amazing and perform small funny skits for their kids. I had to leave early to go meet the women in the health post, and later went to my lil sis' school for more celebrations. There's a celebration happening for all of the people of my site tonight, in the plaza de armas. I gotta go get ready for it too. I do a lot of celebrating here. Sometimes I wonder if calling this "integration into the community" is really true, cause it just feels like I'm spending a lot of time having fun. I also am slowly getting over my fear of dancing in public, because I think being embarrassed is a stupid emotion.
So screw it. I'll just have to get over myself and realize, yea I can't dance but honestly, no one cares except for me. A shot of liquid courage would really help, I suppose, but it wouldn't solve my problem. Plus, I'm wondering if getting alcohol banned from the schools could be a possible project of mine so I should teach by example. Who knows!
So cheers everyone, and as always-
Love and Peace.
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