Last weeks of teaching

We always start lessons in my classroom with the questions, what is the weather and date today? We do a whole run through of the calendar month, year, pearing out the window to see if it is cloudy or sunny outside. Our newest vocabulary is the seasons and I began this by asking the kids what the seasons where in spanish and to tell me in spanish what the weather is like in the summer (the season it is here now). I was greated with blank stares... Okay, is it sunny in the summer, does it rain in the summer?? I asked holding up some picture cards as prompts. Raise yours hands for rainy! Raise your hands for snowy! I tried to see if the old democratic method would prompt more responses. Nope. A few confused hands, but it wasn´t really clicking. We could conclude the it was a tiny bit warmer in the summer, and one group even remembered that there is a bit of a rainy season in the summer, but we didn´t really get anywhere until we started talking about summer activities.Hands shot up left and right... Tomar helado! Vamos a la piscina! Jugar en el parque! Viajamos con mi familia! It´s not that the kids didn´t understand that we were talking about the seasons but in La Paz the weather does not really change with the seasons. In fact according to weather reports next week might have me writing up on the board, it is a cold and snowy summer day. About an hour later it will probably be sunny and hot. Layering has taken on a whole new meaning here.

Every morning we take a break in the teachers lounge for breakfast which consists of marjaqueta (a type of small baguette) and sarna (a type of roll). The drink changes every day but my favorites are api, a warm corn and sugar drink and te which is usually fuity and has a chunk of fresh bpeach, apple, or cranberry that has been boiled in the te which is then divied out and plunked into each mug. This is also the place where the director comes in and talks to us past the end of recess about how he is cutting the teachers pay and preventing the formations of unions. Other days he has show and tell and passes around pictures of himself shaking hands with the pope or give me a hard time for not attending a formal dinner for the seniors even though he failed to give me an invitation. I love the guy so much that I am writing a formal letter and going to speak to some of the higher ups in the church to see if I can get him relieved of his position. Basically they can´t fire me and I´m not methodist so I can say whatever I want, and I intend to. Not to bitch. I love Luz, my co-teacher, and in fact I am complaining mostly because I hate to see her biting her tongue because she needs the job to support her three kids.

The kids I work with are also great. I feel like a celebrity when I walk through the halls of swarming red sweatshirts. I have tiny bodies wrapping themselves around my legs or hiding in my white lab coat (as one preschooler amused herself the other day until I had to remove her to continue walking). Hello teacher! They all yell, instead of hola profesora, which is the standard greeting when your not the english teacher.

I am sad to be leaving La Paz but really excited to travel. I have been doing some on the weekends but things have been complicated slightly by a recent bought of salmonella. I love the food here, but it does not love my tummy and it seems like I keep suffering from complications related to the lack of potable water or someone´s failure to wash their hands. I had to go to the hospital to have a doctor figure out what was wrong with me and the doctor told me it is the season for salmonella. She made it sound like it was some sort of exciting fruit that could now be found in the market. I love summer, all the salmonella, and then the e.coli that comes into bloom in the fall! Wondeful!

Although there is no clean drinking water the city has hired herds of zebras to help people cross the street. People are paid to dress up in absurd zebra costumes and motion to people when the light changes. They also try to keep the cars from inching forward too much. The other day I saw a zebra kick a car in the bumper, apparently the mini buses weren´t taking him seriously. I can´t imagine why.