Today 9/11/08, it was our turn to make lunch for Alex's class. How it works at the school is they have a lunch menu, and they assign days to each child. There is a big plastic container that has plates, bowls, forks, drink jug, and several large containers. You pick it up the day before your turn to make the food, and it is your turn to wash all the dishes for the day, and prepare the food for the class (according to the menu) for the next day. Our day was hamburgers, peaches and juice. There are 12 kids in Alex's class. Joe is such a trooper and was out firing up the grill by 7:00 am to cook the 12 small burgers. I had to teach my ESL(English Second Language), so I took the food when I dropped Alex at 8:30 am. With groceries, and prep, it cost us less than $10 dollars for everything, and I don't have to cook again until Oct 1st!!!! What a concept. America can seriously learn something from this. I don't have to worry about making her lunch, and she gets something different every day. She really likes it. The school really seems to have themselves together. I think Alex is finally starting to enjoy it. I still don't think she totally knows what is going on because of the language barrier, but she is learning a lot already.
I had my second ESL class today. There are 13 students in the class, most of them are under 25. They all want to learn English for their jobs, and they all seem very motivated to learn. I took a Spanish class at CU, and no one in my class seemed this motivated!!!!! So far I have just been "helping", but I am teaching the entire class next Thursday, Sept 18th, so I hope I do OK. I have never taught anything in this format, but I am sure I will survive. Hey, it's volunteer, so what can they do, fire me???? The hardest part is when you say something, but don't know how to say it in Spanish, and you can tell they have no idea what you are saying by the blank looks on their faces. I wonder if that is the same look I have when they speak Spanish to me? Probably.
The workers are pretty much done with the house, so we started doing some work on the front lawn. They cut down a few cactus, but left the stumps about 2 feet off the ground. We are attempting to chop them down with our primitive tools that the workers left here. Alan was also a big help with the water, until I looked over and saw him drinking from the hose. Ok in US, not OK in Mexico. The roosters on the roof next door had an "outing" the other day, and only one of them returned. The remaining one is the only one who won his match? At least the morning noise is cut down by a bit. We also noticed they don't crow as loud when it is raining in the morning.
We went to one of the Independence Day activities, and we forgot the camera, so we don't have a picture, however, here is the summary. ANYONE, makes a paper mache ballon. They then fill them with Kerosene gas, and light the bottom. The gas is warm air, of course, and they begin to float into the air. As the gas begins to burn, the "balloon" starts to burn up. A successful balloon will burn up before it comes back down. HOWEVER, sometimes the very large ones catch fire before they leave the ground. You would think they MIGHT have a fire extinguisher near by, just in case the burning balloon thing begins to blow toward the crowd in the stands, BUT and army of youths manned with large sticks to beat the fire out seemed to be adequate. Who would have thought? It was quite impressive to see the balloons that were handmade. Some were over 10 ft tall. There is a parade tomorrow, so we will try to get some good Mexican float pictures.
Pictures are of Alex in her sports day uniform, Joe grilling 12 little burgers at 7:00 am, and Alan and I working on the yard.
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