kids are punks in spanish too

so at Valdivia this week, I am working with the little kids.  3-8 year olds.  we´re doing a big paper mache project in that yesterday I had them rip up newspaper, today we´re making our shapes, tomorrow painting them maybe and then thursday taking them home (we´re going on a field trip to the pool on friday so there´s no program). 

Saimon is three and very cute.  he looks like he just walked out of a Guayasamin painting. 

He has many brothers and sisters.  Four of whom also come to Valdivia, Scarlet, Nixon, Leonela, and Michel.  Yesterday we were doing a cutting and pasting activity, which he has trouble with because he is so young but can do.  Except he didn´t want to.  He pretended that he doesn´t know how to color at all and just scribbled with a yellow crayon on everything (I know him, he knows how to color, at least to pick out other colors) but when I tell him to switch colors his siblings say “he doesn´t know how to do it!” when he actually does.  so then he finished his activity way before everyone else so I started him ripping up newspaper. 

he tore up one sheet and then he stuck his tongue out at me and wouldn´t do anything else the rest of the day.  stuck his tongue out?  who does that?  I think he just learned how to do it actually because I noticed him sticking it out at everyone that annoyed him yesterday.  he thinks he gets away with it because he´s little and cute and his siblings are all so well-behaved.

ramas

holy week in ecuador started off with a bang, palm sunday. 

I skipped the procession with palms in the morning because I was tired and I didn´t want to go by myself.  Slept over in arbolito saturday night to watch the leaked version of the new xmen movie (I hear the version they´re releasing is totally different so I´m really excited for that, but the leaked one was enjoyable, even more enjoyable if you know anything about xmen), so I went to arbolito mass in the morning.  apparently, in ecuador, you have to buy your palms on palm sunday which half doesn´t make sense because there are palm trees everywhere.  but everyone who is selling weaves and decorates the palms into crosses or fans or baskets or other cool designs and then you pay $.50-1  for one.  I didn´t get a palm in arbo because I didn´t know I needed money.  oops.  after mass there was a mad rush to get the palms blessed, for all those people who didn´t go early.  they had a procession from the bridge to the church, with everyone walking and waving palms and singing songs.  a short, small procession. 

at night we went to mass in AJS, and remembered money so we bought a palm for our house.  Padre gave us specific instructions of what to do with it, hang it in your house until next lent, then the sunday before ash wednesday bring it in and give it to the sacristan OR on ash wednesday take your whole family outside and burn it together.   Mass was cool because it was packed, standing room only, and almost every family had elaborate palms, some of them were ridiculously tall and apparently it´s sacreligious to set the palm down (I did) so they were all waving them during mass.  Whenever we´d get to a particularly spirited song or mass part, everyone waved their palms in the air in time to the music and it was sooo neat to look across the room and see everyone waving their palms.  I did feel bad for the poor altar server who had to hold and wave Padre´s palm all mass.  His was of course the largest. 

We sat next to one of my favorite families, the Palmas, which was also enjoyable and Colie somehow stole a brand-new baby from the person she was sitting next to and held a baby all mass.  good times were had by all.  after mass we went to the park across the street with the Palmas so they could buy us tasty and sketchy street meat and we could play tag with the girls.  we ate shady hamburgers and Javier tried to teach us the difference between different types of latin music.

gone shopping

Megan is out of the country and we don´t have any retreat groups or pressing work to be done. and I need a dress for Amber´s wedding. A friend of mine and neighbor, Nancy, is a seamstress and is going to make the dress for me, so Monday morning we went into guayaquil, carting the picture we chose from people en español, to a fabric store. 

we rode the bus downtown, where there´s a bunch of people and tiny stores that only sell one thing, which I understand because they only have the space to sell one thing.  there´s also people with spots on the sidewalk where they sell shoes and socks and clothes and blender parts and whatever you need.  we found the fabric store, which was surprisingly huge.  two floors, with all different types and colors of material and a million people. 

the fabric is all on shelves behind counters, so you go up to the counter that has the type of material you want and ask the girl to show it to you.  we asked her how much we´d need of the black satin chiffon stuff to make the dress in the mag, and then she cut it.  she made a carbon copy of the receipt, gave us the copy, and pinned the original to the fabric.  then a guy came by, going around to all the counter girls, and picked up the pile of fabric.  he took it back behind a different counter where there was a huge long line and we went to the caja to pay.  so you pay at the register, they stamp your receipt as cancelled, and then you take the cancelled receipt to the other counter to pick up your material.  so you have to stand in three lines in order to buy one piece of material. 

we did the same thing at the zipper/thread store.  many things in ecuador are organized this way.  to prevent theft.  or just to make things just a bit more complicatedl, we´re not sure.