Chivalry is alive and well in Sala Uno

Well I guess it’s a good sign that I’m not posting more than once a week – must mean I’m busy or something.

So indeed our third roommate did arrive last Tuesday – Ancilla from Holland and super nice. I’m still getting to know her because she had a bit of jet-lag for the first few days and then her work schedule is Wednesday-Sunday so we don’t have the same off-days. There is a chance she might be moving to Solomon Klein to live because she’s going to be here for at least a year, if not longer, and she wants to work and live at the same place. We’ll find out tomorrow or sometime later this week if she’s staying here or not.

The weekend was pretty good – Friday night we slept outside for this fundraiser called “Noche Sin Techo” (Night Without a Roof) for another organization in Cochabamba that works with teenagers of the street. We slept outside in a plaza – me, Jordan, Leena, Julia, and about 50 other people altogether. It was a little chilly and only Julia and I were able to actually get any sleep out of our group (I accredit my ability to sleep to the fact that I just graduated from college where you learn to sleep through almost anything…). We also met a group of kids from the MaryKnoll center who are down here for 6 months at a language institute – two of whom graduated from Creighton and knew Mike Pogge – which was a super exciting small world realization for me. I love how small the world is, even way down south here.

Saturday was a great day – I sat in Burger King mooching off of their WiFi from about 2:45-6:45 attempting to “watch” the ND game on gametracker and get updates from friends on Skype. Getting to talk to Emily, Katie Merriam, Maria, Bliss and my parents really put me in an amazing mood (that and the ND win of course!) – I still find myself struggling with not feeling connected to everyone when I’m down here, so getting to talk to them really lifted my spirits.

Sunday was fairly uneventful, but for as generally lazy as I was I have to admit there wasn’t much I could have done because it was a national pedestrian holiday – which meant that only people with special permits could drive their cars (I saw about 20 cars all day). Jordan and I walked to the big super market, IC Norte, and bought flour so I could make bread again and the walk was really cool because it’s a good 20-25 minutes each way and there were NO cars on the street – just people and bikes. I think I was particularly fascinated by all the people/bikes in the streets because I’m fairly certain that a national pedestrian holiday (where even public transportation is closed) would NEVER fly in the U.S. – but maybe that’s the pessimist in me.

The work week thus far has been fairly uneventful – although I am definitely noticing a difference between how the kids behave, particularly in the morning during bathtime, with the different sets of mama’s. They are much calmer and generally more well-behaved with Maribel and her partner than with Albertina and the new mama. I haven’t really been able to pick up on what exactly the differences are between how the mama’s act towards the kids – but it seems like they respect Maribel and her partner more than Albertina and the new mama (I really need to work on getting all their names down…).

Best story of the week so far happened on Monday in the afternoon about an hour before I was leaving. The mama’s and I were sitting in the playroom with all the kids playing with the jugetes and Johnoton (who is always causing trouble with both sets of mamas) decides to start pulling Adrianna’s hair and generally beating up on her. While the mama’s and I are yelling at him to stop, Gonzalo took it upon himself to run (as much of a run as a one year old can do) over to Johnoton and start bopping him on the head for hitting Adrianna. At this point the mama’s and I loose it and start cracking up while cheering Gonzalo on – turns out chivalry is alive and well in Sala Uno because then a few of the others came over to bop Johnoton on the head as well and eventually he got the message and left Adrianna alone.

Thursday will be the one-month mark of my time here. Time has flown. I cannot believe it’s been that long and I’ve taken it upon myself to do some self-reflection of my time here. I definitely think I’ve taken it a little easy on myself in terms of sheltering myself with English and generally not going out on a limb. Even when I am around people speaking Spanish I’ve found that I’m very shy – it’s hard for me to initiate conversation with people I don’t really know because I don’t have any of my personality in Spanish – I’m still working with the basics. Even Melissa, who has been here for a year already and spoke Spanish fluently before coming down here, says that it’s hard because you are definitely a different person when it’s not your native language – you don’t have the sarcasm or the jokes and other conversational tactics you can fall back on in your native language. I definitely need to challenge myself more in the next few weeks – I’ve given myself my adjustment period and now I’m ready to dive in full force. Ready or not, here I go.