aaaaargh!

Today was rubbish (with a few nice bits). Went over to centro Junconi in the car with Gelos – we left too late to go by bus, which was the plan so that I could see where to get (and get off) the bus. The first group of kids were little loves, around 6 or 7 years old – really nice but kind of hard to understand (you might be detecting a common theme in what I’m writing). Half way through we stopped to play a game of pato ganso (ducky goosey). And then a crap game I’d only just remembered as I’d been told to find games for these kids. For the uninitiated pato ganso invoved one person patting everyone on the head saying pato, when they pat someone on the head and say ganso they both run like mad around the circle to beat the other back to the same spot. When I was patted on the head with a ganso I did an exaggerated “oh” of surprise, which I think was interpretted by the staff as pain, and the little boy who’d ganso-d me was told off. Oops!

There’s 3 hours between my 2 sessions at centro Juconi, which is on the north side of town by an enormous, functional rather than aesthetically pleasing, market, so Gelos brought me back here to the house. On our return to the centro the conversation started: Gelos kept telling me I am the maestra (teacher-cum-leader) and I should be teaching the group, disciplining them, being the authority figure, organising games at break time and talking to them more. I told her I can’t – not because I don’t want to but because I am bloody incapable of any of the above in reasonable Spanish and controlling a group of 6 years olds aint as simple as it should be at the best of times.

In addition she told me that the projects I’d planned wouldn’t be enough to fill the time at the casa (the older kids) and anyway she didn’t know why I was going to get the kids to trace stuff because they were able to draw. I politely pointed out that I had sent her a choice of projects a couple of months ago, and had prepared the one that had been chosen, and no problems were pointed out then and I’d asked her, when I’d written out the timetable, how fast she thought the kids would work. And another thing! Why was I offering my time to Travis as a designer and offering to help Emily at the case when I ought, if I had the time, be giving her the benefit of my vast portfolio of art projects (which I don’t have)?

You can imagine that my confidence going in to the second session wasn’t high. These kids were a bit older – up to 12 – and seem to like wrestling! Three of them were going to be wrestlers when they grow up (it’s big here), one was going to be a singer as well – there was also a fireman and a policeman and a mother. Some of the girls copied ‘my boyfriend’ which was commented on even though he was made blond (still had the big nose though)!

Two of the staff led me to the bus stop through the market (a man snipping the toes off chicken’s feet). Hope I’ll be able to find the bus stop again. Welled up on the bus and on the way home, so rang Travis to ask to speak with him tomorrow. Gelos can carrying on saying “talk to the kids more” as much as she likes but saying it ain’t gonna change my ability over night. Her expectations were obviously higher than I can deliver. Not my fault, not hers, but we need to find a plan B (so I practised how to say this in Spanish!). I’m going to speak to her tomorrow morning

Walked into town with Eva and Emily, both of whom were sympathetic, and had a wander around town – nowhere in particular and didn’t stop anywhere.