Plays and Piñatas
That´s me and one of my classes. I don´t remember if it´s the morning one or the afternoon one. Morning, I think.
I went back to school today after finishing up training yesterday. I don´t necessarily mind training, though to be honest I don´t quite understand the purpose of this internship. We had that training this week and a BTEC training next week (BTEC = Business and Technology Education Council ... don´t ask, I don´t know what it´s for) but other than that, we´re basically just volunteers. We don´t have any additional responsibilities or anything. Not that that´s bad - honestly, I wish I could just be at the school more instead of doing trainings that don´t seem to have a purpose, but I came this summer so I can claim it as an internship and that´s what goes on my resume.
School was fun today. The other volunteers put on a play (a non-musical version of Into the Woods) and it was really good. Then we had a birthday party for everyone whose birthdays were in the past month. All the birthday kids sit together and there´s a tradition of all the kids and then all the teachers getting together in line and giving them hugs. Then they whack a piñata for awhile until it explodes. There were a few close calls where they almost hit other kids, but luckily that didn´t happen. We also had 5 teachers leaving this week (including the one I´m taking over for), so they all got hugs from all the kids as they left for the day. It was very sweet.
I´m really enjoying this experience - particularly the kids - but I don´t feel like I´m really part of the group. They all hang out a lot and I don´t really get invited, and I was the only one without a part in the play. That´s probably because today was only my 2nd day at the school and they ran out of parts, but still. I´ve been staying in more than the others because I got here kinda sick and want to make sure that´s all out of my system, and other parts of my body are adjusting oddly as well. Now I´ve got a splitting headache that´s probably the result of not drinking the recommended amount of water. There´s a volunteer BBQ tonight that I´m going to skip due to the headache, the fact that I´d have to bring a dish to share, and the fact that I´m being picked up to go to Quetzaltenango at 4am tomorrow morning. No, that´s not a typo - 4am. Part of my problem is also that I don´t do very well with a large group of people. I´m much better with one or two people rather than 10 or 20. I think it´ll do me good to get out of Antigua for the weekend and hang out with Joanna for a bit, and it´ll probably get better once I´m at the school more and have more of a daily interaction with everyone. Plus, I´m on the lake trip with most of them next week. I guess we´ll see.