week 5: a punch in the face (july 14-20)

paola: well i'm not going to lie... this was one of the roughest weeks i've had here. i kinda started to explain last week, but one girl i work with, paola, is really tough. she is 14 and obviously has some major learning disabilities, however i'm not sure there is a specific diagnosis for what is wrong. i think the major problem is that she's different from everyone else and she knows it and that hurts her self-esteem, so she acts out. and who knows what else she's been through in her life prior to being here. anyway, it's hard because i know that she is capable of more than she shows and probably more than most people give her credit for. however, she needs some serious discipline. she's the most capable of all the kids in casa san pascual, but i think due to the fact that there are five other kids that need a ton of attention all the time, and only three tias, she isn't able to be disciplined properly. and she just loves attention (positive or negative), and hates when it's directed toward someone else. you can tell that a lot of people come in and out of her life, so that's probably hard too. but i could tell from the moment i got here that she was testing me, to see how much i'm going to let her get away with. so, it's kinda been my goal to be tough with her in a loving way to try to get her to understand that she's capable of more than she things. it worked ok for a while... we made a behavior chart and when she behaved in our time together she got to do special things. however, this week was rough. the power went out in our computer class which kind of riled up all the kids (and she doesn't do well when the other kids are going crazy)... so she started getting out of control and so i made her go home and on the way home she started chucking big rocks at me... and she's pretty much like my size... so i'm not going to lie, i was a little scared. so, the next day i talked to her tias and the physiologist and we decided that her punishment would be to not go to the summer program in the afternoon. so, that night i found out that she went to the summer program anyway, which made me a little upset. the next morning i took her into our classroom and asked her why she didn't listen to me and told her that we couldn't work together the rest of the week as a consequence. she did not like this at all and got up and punched me in the eye... it was quite interesting... i have to say i've never been punched, so it was a very interesting experience. that was a rough day, but i guess she ended up feeling bad because the next day when i came to her house she made me a bracelet and her tias had her apologize. then the next day she made me a necklace. i told her that we still wouldn't be able to work together or go to the summer program this week because i need her to learn to respect me, but i told her next week will be a new week and we can start over. i really don't want to give up on her (as tempting as that is most days) because i feel she's a good kid who's just been through a lot and is up against a lot as well. say a few prayers for her if you could :)

apagones: so it seems like every week i think of something else that i take for granted at home. this week it was electricity. the electricity in this country is very interesting. there are black-outs, or "apogones", all the time. i guess the major electric company is going bankrupt, so they turn off the electricty for about 12 hours every day... but you never know when, so it could be a few hours here, a few hours there. but, like with most things in this country, we're a little better off at the orphanage. they've set up this like battery generator things that is connected to at least one light in every house and a couple outlets in the volunteer house, so even if there is not electricty ("no hay luz") we are usually fine because of the battery. however, when the electricity goes out for a while, like it did this week (about 40 hours), the battery doesn't charge, so it doesn't work either. so we had about 2 days with nothing this week... i mean it actually wasn't that bad, we really don't use things that require electricity here as much as we do back home... but our food did dit in the fridge all that time, and we still eat it. people here don't really seem to worry about those kinds of things that much. i haven't gotten too sick yet, so we'll see...

arroz y habichuelas: those of you that know me well, know much my family and i think and talk about food... so i felt it was only appropriate to give a little food update. i've been here long enough now to realize that there is a pattern in the meals we eat. i think i explained this before, but the way we eat is this... there is a kitchen that cooks for all the houses. the kids go pick up the buckets of food for their house before each meal and bring it home and their tias serve it up for them. all the volunteers are assigned to a house and we go there and eat lunch and dinner with the. so i eat 14 meals a week with them and i would say about 75% of them consist of lots of white rice, a few beans and a little bit of some kind of meat. it really isn't bad, it's just that it's mostly rice and it gets a little old after a while. i like all the meats we get even though i usually don't know what they are and we usually don't get very much of it. however, some days we get fish and i could definitely live without that since it usually comes complete with some bones and scales in there somewhere. tuesday night we get cheese and platinos. this is not one of my favorite meals... the best way i can describe the cheese is if you imagine how the zoo smells and then put that into a taste... yes, very gross, and i haven't met too many cheese that i don't like. then the platinos that they serve with the cheese are kind of like bananas, but they are more like the texture of potatoes... they are boiled i think and are very starchy and don't have a whole lot of flavor. then on friday and sunday nights, the kitchen staff is off, so we just eat bread and juice (we usually just drink water) for dinner. sometimes it's nice though because the tias will give us a hard boiled egg to go with the bread. my favorite day in the whole world is wednesday. i'm not sure what happens in the kitchen... maybe they feel extra happy on wednesdays or they are just trying to help us get through hump day, but they just pump out some super delish food... like stuff i would actually eat at home. for lunch we get this yellow rice... it's different from the rice we usually get, it's almost a little like fried rice and it has corn in it. and then they put this amazingly delicious piece of chicken on top of it that just falls off the bone. it's so good... my favorite meal here. then on wednesday night we get these potatoes... they are sweet, but they are not sweet potatoes, because i do not like sweet potatoes and i love these... i really don't know how to describe them but they are delicious. and then sometimes they put these scrambled eggs on top of them (which is my favorite), otherwise it's pasta with a little sauce (which is a weird combo, but still pretty good). so overall, the food here isn't bad, it's just a lot of carbs... all the time. you could not do the atkins diet here. it's very filling though... i think my stomach has shrunk because i get full really fast. and the good thing is, if you ever don't want something, you just push it over to one of the kids plates... they eat everything!

"consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. and let perseverance be perfect, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." - james 1:2-4