La Gringita

            I think that we have officially entered the rainy season…when it rains it is cold and dreary, but in the morning there is usually sun and warmth.  Unfortunately, this means that my clothes that usually dry in less than a day outside in the sun have been soaking wet for more than 24 hours.  On the bright side, along with the rainy season comes lots of mangos, my favorite fruit!

            Changing subjects, when the taxi pulled into San Salvador on Tuesday it didn’t stop by the bridge like it normally does - it started to go down a side street, which was the wrong direction from my school.  It turned out everyone in the taxi, except for me, are teachers at another school so they were having the taxi take them straight to their school.  As I started to move to get out, one of the women in the back of the car with me yelled to the driver to stop the car for “la gringita”.  Since being here, I have not directly been called a gringo (although I am sure that I have been called a gringo many times behind my back) and I am not sure how I feel about it. However, this was made up for because that night I was in a taxi on the way home from a meeting in Urubamba and the taxi driver asked me how long I was in Pisac for.  I think he expected me to say just a couple days, but when I said three months he said, “ahhhh peruana”.  It was fun to be called a Peruvian.  I obviously am tall and white and don’t speak great Spanish - I’m a foreigner through and through.  When I am with only Peruvians, I notice my differences very frequently…especially my height.  I am actually more aware of my height when I am standing next to my host family than my lack of Spanish now!  However, when I see tourists walking around the Pisac market, for example, I feel way more Peruvian than them.  It is a weird thing to feel both like an outsider and part of the culture at the same time. 

            Speaking of culture, there are still a lot of things that surprise me about the culture of my school.  For example, most of the kids are not dropped off or picked up by their parents, and some have to walk or take a bus long distances home.  One day, Emerson, a very mischievous boy in my class, was outside the gate of the school playing with fireworks until 10 a.m. and no one knew he was there until Vanessa was going to buy a snack during recess and then dragged him into the school.  In the classroom there is a white-board with each student’s name printed on it (except for 2 students who joined the class half way through the year) and Vanessa puts a mark next to each name at the start of the day if the student is there.  However, this board is erased at the beginning of every week, so there is no way to tell how many days a student has missed.  I think it would be helpful to keep an official attendance sheet because it might help explain why one student is struggling more than another if we could easily see how many and which days he or she has missed.  Also, parents don’t have to report absences, so the school has no way of knowing if the kid is sick or playing outside with fireworks.

            By the way, the same woman called me la gringita again today.

            Tomorrow there is going to be a big fiesta at my school for the Virgen del Rosario.  The students have been practicing their traditional dances for the past two weeks.  Today, most of the moms were at the school cleaning and practicing their dancing.  And the four teachers were helping to clean and meeting for most of the day, so it was really not a real day of school – no formal education.  I played with the kids outside or in a classroom for the whole day.  This was fun because it was the first time I was really able to play with the kids for a long period of time.  They only have half an hour of recess every day, during which they are also eating their snacks.  I taught a bunch of my students 4 hand games that I used to play, which they loved.  Some of the songs I sang in English and it was funny to hear them try to repeat what I was saying – I am sure they think it is just as funny when I speak Spanish.  Later, some of the students decided that I was the perfect jungle gym, since theirs has been taken apart because of the construction going on at the school.  It was all fun until one of the girls somehow did a somersault off of my shoulders over my head, taking my glasses with her.  Amazingly, neither Flordeli nor my glasses were at all hurt, but after that we went back to calmer games. I am looking forward to the fiesta tomorrow!