Rain rain go away...

It´s officially rainy season. And I can already tell it will be the test of my patience at Solomon.

This past week it was rainy and cold (granted nothing compared to the cold in the States right about now – although the Mama´s love to dress the kids like it´s negative fifteen degrees outside with sweaters and hats and pants when it´s a mere 50 degrees outside) EVERY day from Monday-Friday and by the end of the week I was dead. Which is saying a lot considering it was a Sabina MWF week. The poor kids were going stir crazy because they had to stay inside every day all day – eve when it wasn´t actually raining, if there was the slightest bit of water or puddles around we had to keep them inside for fear of them wreaking havock. I understand that 21 one to two year olds and puddles and mud doesn´t paint the prettiest of pictures, but by the end of the week I was ready to risk that havock for my mental sanity.

Although my main memories of the past week are of crying, screaming, insanity there were also a fair share of adorable moments as always. Probably one of the biggest highlights of the week for me was seeing that Edson, going on 4 but not moving up to the next sala because of his inability to walk, could do the “Chu chua” dance – something a little like the Spanish version of the Hokey-Pokey where they add a body-part action ever verse and end with ¡lengua afuera! (tounge out!) so that you end up singing “ la la la la la la la la la la” instead of the words. The second-to-last verse goes a little something like this…

¡compañía!
brazo extendido (arms out)
puño cerrado (fists closed)
dedos arriba (thumbs up)
hombro fruncido (literally means “puckered shoulders” )
cabeza hacia atrás (head back)
cola hacia atrás (but back)
pie de pingüino (feet like a pengin)
Chu chu uá, chu chu uá
Chu chu uá, uá, uá
Chu chu uá, chu chu uá
Chu chu uá, chu chu uá

I also went climbing on Wednesday after a bit of peer pressure from Jen (who works at Solomon with me) and Diego to give it a try. The last time I climbed was at summer camp when I was twelve. I envisioned the climbing walls I´d seen in the States – with the multicolored fake rocks – but instead ended up climbing a cement wall with cement knobs in the middle of the soccer stadium while all the venders were setting up for the nights game. Hilarious. Although I did manage to make it all the way to the top – after about ten minutes and about 4 descansos (rests). I´m told I was held back by not having the propper shoes which was why I had such difficulty and that I did better than most people on their first try – I still think they were just being nice to me and Diego was doing his boyfriend-duty of flattering me. Today Jen told me they installed some new cement knobs in the wall so it´s a bit easier…who knows maybe I´ll give it another try sometime soon. The next thing on their peer-pressure list for me to do is paragliding…which I was initially 100% against (I have nightmares about the free-falling feeling in my stomach) but when we swung by the office of the place that we would do it with after climbing and there were pictures on the wall of people doing it AND I was reassured that there was no free-falling involved…I´m starting to get convinced.

This week has also been a bit rainy and cold, which has kept us inside more than I would like but less than last week. So hopefully, considering this is now an Albertina week, it will continue at least at this rate if not with some nicer days.

Also, today Johnoton, the notorious peleador (fighter) in our sala finally moved up to Sala 2. And even though we´ve all been saying for months that he needed to move up, taking him over to the Sala 2 lunch table and leaving him there was not an easy task. He was also probably the most avid of the kids in my sala of screaming my name all the time, so when I saw Sala 2 on my way out this afternoon and he walked over to me and took my hand and said Katy! my heart melted. Although it was also hilarious to see all the kids in my sala accepting the new girl to come up from recien nacidos (new borns) and standing around her in a circle pointing and screaming ¡wawa! ¡bebe! (wawa is the word for baby in quechua which is the language spoken in the campo) even though she is about the same age and size as all of them.