midweek

It’s Thursday night and no one is home (apart from me). The art session at casa Juconi went well this morning, the boys were relaxed and happy to do the work. Gelos and I had printed out the 4 finished portraits onto transfer paper and we ironed them onto T-shirts – the boys were really, really chuffed and then did a half portrait of themselves in paper which will be ‘printed’ on the back of the T-shirts. And I was really, really chuffed as I half expected the iron-on transfer stuff not to work brilliantly. They take the mickey out of me a bit for not understanding much Spanish (in a good way!) and I taught one of them the English for ‘mono’ so he could go and tease his mate by calling him ‘monkey’! I think we all quite like each other and they were keen to help me clear up, especially the ‘leader of the pack’. Alison (director) was busy when I got back so I haven’t got to talk to her yet about project ideas – no great hurry. I walked over to ‘Volcanes’ (HQ) as arranged to help Alfredo with any design needed, but none was. He hasn’t seemed so friendly since last week – perhaps the email I sent him with the email inviation was poorly worded or something (!?). Bloody hot again. I came back and prepared the photos I took of the boys work this morning ready for Gelos to print out tomorrow.

I’ve got to prepare another project for the boys at the casa – I’m going to do a Picasso-style portrait thing. Tomorrow I’m going to the casa again to start painting a mural on the wall. I did a few different designs last week and they’ve chosen one with figures similar to those in the Juconi logo. Wish I’d brought some painting clothes (and sadly my oldest top was lost by the landerette).

Yesterday Eva (my assistant for the day) and I made it to centro Juconi on the bus. Both sessions went really well. The younger kids understood all my instrctions, whereas the older ones in the afternoon (typically, when Gelos was there!) did not and she had to re-iterate what I said. The 2 groups worked differently – the younger ones racing ahead, the older ones working slower and with much more care. The session with the younger ones went so well that we didn’t stop for a game of pato-ganso and over-ran by half an hour. The younger ones aren’t put off atall by how often I misunderstand, the older ones are just as enthusiastic. It was very enjoyable, but very tiring. We didn’t make it to the cinema last night as planned (Emily wasn’t feeling too good), so we sat and chatted about all sorts for quite a while over tea. Really like Emily, and get on much better with her than I first thought we would. She is/has been incredibly helpful. She’s away this weekend playing in an ‘ultimate frisbee’ tournament (whatever that is!).

I only have 4 more art sessions left (finishing a week today) as the following Monday is dia del muerte as nobody's working, and I fly back on Wednesday.