If only they had z-packs in Bolivia...

News flash: when you work with 23 one-year olds, you’re likely to get a cold just from being around them for 4 days. Hence, I spent most of the weekend, especially Sunday, attempting to sleep off a head-cold I seem to have caught from the kiddos. I really wish I could just walk to Health Services like I did at ND and order myself a z-pack to zap this thing, but for now I’m surviving on lots of augua and Musinex and Daquil/Nyquil.
Saturday morning I woke up in a bit of a funk, I guess what I would call my first bout of homesickness. I think it was a combination of being sick/tired and exhausted from the week. I was also feeling a bit like my daily interactions with people weren’t very high and, as most of you know, I thrive on being around other people. However, the day got a lot better when Jordan and I went to Nazareth for lunch and I got to hang out with those kids for a few hours and eat lunch with them. As much as I love my own kids in Sala Uno, it was really nice to be around kids who can actually talk and interact with you. After lunch and a little playtime, Jordan and I ventured to the Cancha and finally purchased me a cell phone! The Cancha was definitely quite an experience. They literally have everything you could want there – clothes, fruit/veggies, fresh meat, toiletries, office supplies, pirated movies/music – it’s insane.
After that we came home to rest for a bit and to get ready for the volunteer dinner. However, another highlight of the weekend was that we didn’t have water in our apartment from Friday night until Sunday morning, awesome. But nonetheless we went to meet everyone at dinner at a local pizza place and I met two couples of volunteers who I hadn’t met before – one of the couples is much older, in their late 50s, and down here volunteering after they’ve retired. They were all really nice and it was a fun dinner. Afterwards Jordan, Leena, Julia, Sonia and I went out to a Reggae concert/party at a local bar and played some more mentirosa (which, I was much better at this time).
Sunday was a very quiet day. I attempted to go to Burger King to use their WiFi, but the WiFi was down and all the Internet cafes were closed so I ended up just venturing back to the apartment and sleeping off my cold some more. Jordan and I went down for dinner a bit early (we thought we heard them yell “sancho!” which they do right before dinner, but I think someone just yelled “Pancho!” – which is the name of the dog) but it was fun because I got to talk to Fernando, one of the boys who lives downstairs, for a good amount of time. I definitely think I want to try to make it down there more frequently, they even invited me to play futbol (soccer) with them next weekend – although for all the McG girls who witnessed me get the soccer ball to the face the one time I tried to play sophomore year, you know how well that will probably go. I figure they’re going to make fun of the gringa girl anyway, might as well give them a good reason to!
It’s only Wednesday and boy am I glad it’s this far in the week. Monday and Tuesday were definitely the longest days, my feet were exhausted on Tuesday when I got home – I literally laid on my bed reviewing my Spanish flashcards for items around the house (the ones my mom labeled the entire Bay House with) for about thirty minutes after I walked in the door. I’m definitely starting to get into a rhythm and I feel like I have more control in the Sala than I did last week, which is always a plus. Both sets of mama’s have officially kicked me off plate-washing duty and instead I’ve been cleaning the bibs and wiping down the tables/chairs and putting them away. I guess they don’t have much patience for new plate-washers when they don’t explain the process to you. Oh well.
Two of my most entertaining moments so far this week occurred this morning before lunch:
1. Fabian se hizo caca (Fabian went poo-poo) on the swing this morning when I was outside with almost all of the kids as the mama’s were finishing bathing/dressing them for the day. So, I took him to the mama’s to get changed and went out to wash down the area where the caca was. I thought I was being good, taking intiative and cleaning it up, however, when you pour water on the ground and attempt to squeegee it to the drain and have to fight through 15+ one year olds to do so – it doesn’t turn out so well. About 5 of the kids ended up soaked because they thought it was a fun game to splash in the water and I had zero control because if I took my hands off the squeegee to move a kid out of the water, four more jumped in the water. Hence, I felt bad because the mama’s then had to change the pants of about 5 other kids, who hadn’t gone poo-poo. But it was either that or they were all going to be touching/eating/rolling in the caca that was on the ground. I think when you compare both situations, wet, clean, kids are better.
2. Shortly after the caca incident one of the university students motioned to me through the window of the cafeteria and said, what I thought, was something about putting something in my locker. So I went into the cafeteria and then she motioned for me to follow her, which thoroughly confused me because we had passed the lockers by this point, and I find out she wants me to translate for her and the Dutch couple that is adopting one of the kids from Sala 3. Great start, thinking she was talking about using my locker…Aside from the little misunderstanding at the beginning I think I managed to successfully translate between the two parties – the kid, Israel, that they are adopting requires physical therapy for one of his legs and the couple wanted to see if when he lived with them in Bolivia (they are living in Bolivia for 3 months while they sort out paper work on both the Bolivian and Dutch sides) he could go to a different physical therapist than at Solomon Kelin because they thought coming back to Solomon every day would be too much stress for him – but wanted to stress it wasn’t because they didn’t like Solomon, they just thought it would be better for him. The university student then said that they have to go to a specialist first (who Solomon will recommend) and then the specialist will suggest another physical therapist.

All in all I think I’m finally settling in here. I think my biggest issue is how out of touch I feel with everyone at home – not having constant access to internet or being able to pick up the phone and text/call people whenever I want. While I’m sure this departure from instant communication is good for me, it’s definitely taking getting used to and there are days that I would kill to have WiFi in our apartment, but hopefully BK will fix their WiFi soon and I can plan on spending copious amounts of hours there on Sundays catching up with everyone as I sip on a chocolate milkshake.