What to do when there is no school...

Thank God one of the other volunteers lives with a teacher in our school. Otherwise I would have spent all last night preparing my presentation, gotten up at 5:15 am, and arrived at the bus stop just to find that there were no teachers going to school. Even now I will have a bunch of extra food that I bought for a snack. Rule number one of giving teacher trainings is that you MUST bring a snack. This will be a lot easier when I have a kitchen (maybe with an oven…or toaster oven?) to make things myself, but for now there are plenty of bakeries everywhere that sell all kinds of delicious sweets and carbs. As if the tortillas weren’t enough. It is to the great frustration of all the female trainees that while the boys just keep losing weight from all the carbs, our bodies react in the opposite way. But I digress…

There was no school today. The teachers in our school finally decided to go to the strikes that have been going on since school was supposed to start maybe a month ago. The main reason, as I understand it, is that the government likes to wait 3 or 4 months before paying the teachers, and they haven’t sent school supplies or snack for the students. Let me stress that this is only how I understand the situation. In teacher meetings they speak really really fast and I can’t always understand the specifics of the debates. Anyway, for us no school means no work, so we had to postpone the teacher workshop that we were supposed to give this morning.

Instead I got to go to the town health center to talk to them about water regulation and quality. I found out that they really only test for E. Coli in the water and that although they do the testing, it is the municipality that is responsible for treating the water with chlorine. With a scarcity of funds a constant problem in the muni, I am not sure how often this treatment happens. In the community I work in, I don’t think the nacimineto (spring? natural water source?) is contained in a tank or structure, so water treatment isn’t really possible. It is also the most contaminated in the area, so it is really cool that Peace Corps recently donated a water filter to the school. However I don’t often see the kids drinking water… Anyway todo bien interesante and makes me excited about our work here.

On a less serious note, the pictures I am posting are real proof that I have a mysterious admirer who misses me and spells my name wrong all over the park (I am only joking, those of you who are worried about someone stalking the gringa). And FINALLY I got to take a picture in the molino (mill). The only problem was that the molino man was not as willing as he had said he would be, and only let me take a picture when my host mom told him it was just of the corn. He moved out of the way and I felt bad so I just snapped one quick one. He said he is tired of people always taking his picture and my host mom said “as if he were good looking. Ha.” I love her. I am also putting up pictures of a beauuuutiful sunset over the volcano . Enjoy.