What a Week! Part One

I know, I haven't written all week.

I'm not sure that anyone is actually reading this--so I wasn't feeling particularly loyal to my readers. And, if you are actually reading, then write a comment or something!

Here's the roundup:
Saturday: Lazy Day in Antigua--woke up late, went into Antigua, drank coffee, visited some Cathedral ruins, met up with Francisco and drank some more coffee. Went to the grocery store and came home.

Sunday: Woke up very early--got picked up in a death trap of a pickup truck--and planted trees in San Juan del Obispo. There was such a huge response from the community approximately 40 men were there with their machetes and hoes--that we were finished in about an hour.

Walked back to San Miguel Escobar. Made lunch. Took a nap. At 3 pm it started raining. At 3:20 it stopped raining--and the girls started banging on our door. So, we grabbed the soccer ball and headed up to the cancha (playing field). They played like champions. Only champions that don't exactly know all the rules. We're introducing the rules in a few at a time. One of the kids Guillermo (Daniel's son) was standing on the sidelines with me (Oriana and I are trying to only play if the teams are uneven) and started yelling that the girls needed to throw it in, not kick it. So, I explained our philosophy of slowly, but surely, introducing rules. I told him he could stop coaching now.

It started to pour. The girls wanted to keep playing--and they did for about 15 minutes. Then they decided it was time to let the boys play. I was really impressed that they wanted to keep playing in the rain. Hopefully, it will be as much fun this coming Sunday. This might be the one thing that continues going on even after we leave. With any luck, this will become so much a part of what these girls do that they'll go take over the field by themselves.

Then we made dinner for Franklin and Jessica. Or rather Oriana cooked, I chopped things, and washed dishes. We played a couple of rounds of spades--we will finish next time.

Monday wasn't all that interesting. On Tuesday, we worked, had another English class for kids. Class went relatively well. We are apparently pretty conspicuous in town and we had some new kids knock on the door--they couldn't count in English. And one of them couldn't read. That made it slightly difficult to teach him. But, things worked out relatively well. We're working on a dialogue--I'm not sure they are remembering anything.

Then a couple days earlier, two of the farmers, Filiberto and Timoteo, asked us if we could teach them to use the computer. We did that for about an hour or so after English--and started with an automated typing program to teach them how to navigate the keyboard. Eventually, we'll get them to the point where they can do a Google search, etc. But, the farmers are used to work that includes quite a bit of force. There isn't much in their day that requires fine motor skills. And so, teaching them to move their fingers, somewhat delicately, has been difficult. In one class we were able to get their error percentage down. Oriana made them paper keyboards to take home and practice moving their fingers.

I think that's it for now. Stay tuned for Part Two.