Good week

Holaaa. It´s been a pretty great week actually, but compared to last weekend anything would be awesome. Seriously though everything has been grand. I´m still loving work, and realizing how sad I´m going to be to leave all the kids. At Las Tias, where I teach, I´ve ended up being really happy. I´m having a good time teaching the one on one classes (although a few more weeks is about all I could do, I´ve realized that there´s a lot more to teaching English than just speaking it, so the basics is about all I can handle) and I´m actually really enjoying the time when I don´t teach too. I have a bunch of different color thread and the kids (actually strangely mostly the boys) love to make the bracelets. So when I don´t have a class normally we´ll just sit around talking and/or making bracelets, which has been a nice experience. Teaching is fine but I mostly enjoy making bonds with the kids, and learning about their lives and thrilling them with talk about the States (you mean mangos are $2 there???? But they´re only 5cents!!!!!!!!). It´s also been interesting watching the other volunteers come and go. Most of them are only there for a few weeks or a month, which explains why the kids were so frustrating when I first came. I guess if you have a stream of new people, who all start teaching at the beginning ("What. Is. Your. Name???") there´s not a huge incentive to learn or progress. Up until this past week all have been girls, but this new kid, Sam, came and he seems to be having a little more luck. I always peek in with the kid that I´m teaching at the moment and since they´re not spending half the time blowing him kisses or asking him for sex, he has a lot better classroom control...so I´m happy for him and hoping that he´ll make some more headway with them.

The aldea, where I work with the babies, is also going really well. I love love love the babies. It´s neat to see them developing, in the first few months they change so much in their abilities...so I´m able to see them learning to walk, or crawl, or sit up on their own, which is awesome. Im going to take some pictures next week, which I´m hoping will convince my parents to let me smuggle some home with me. Only 2 or 3, I´m trying to be reasonable.

Leon is Leon, I´m not much of a city person BUT at the same time it´s sort of cool to feel comfortable in a city....you know, having certain people you walk by every day and don´t know but say hi to each other. There´s a guy that runs a parking lot right next to our house and the first two months he used to whistle and yell out "chelllllita bonitttta!" as I walked by, so I ignored him most of the time. I decided to start saying hi to him one day, which prompted him to ask for my name and now he says "Hola Alysse! ¿Como estas?" instead, which is a lot more pleasant. We just entered into the HOTTTEST month now, and since Leon is the hottest city in Nicaragua, that´s pleasant. Strangely though I´ve gotten used to the heat I guess, because it doesn´t feel any hotter than when I came here. The only thing that´s changed is that I have to drink more water, which I haven´t been doing so have been a little loopy and sleepy the last two days. Let´s see...I´ve tried something today that I´ve walked by for months and never tasted...and will certainly be my downfall over the next five weeks. Imagine fresh plaintain chips in a bag topped with shredded cabbage soaked in vinegar. Ahhhhhhh amazing. Not really imagining the deliciousness? Maybe a little odd but that can´t be too suprising. That´s about all I´ve got for now, I´m trying to have a uneventful weekend so we´ll see what I come up with. Ciao!