kaki: kaki is my second biggest challenge in casa san pascual behind paola, but he is more of a physical challenge. he is eight years old and pretty small, but the strongest kid i have ever met in my life. his diagnosis is simply “mental retardation”, so i'm not sure exactly what is wrong with him, but he also has some physical disabilities as well. his left foot hasn’t grown correctly and the muscles in his calf are really tight (and too short i think), so he walks normally on his right foot, but on his toes of his left foot. he's always smiling and laughing though… he seems to be a very happy kid, always wanted to play with anyone and everyone. his mouth is always open and his tongue is usually hanging out and he’s usually drooling, but he’s always just so happy. he only says two words “mami” and “kaki” (which is how he got the name, because his real name is reuben)… other than that he doesn’t say anything… he loves to yell and make noises with his mouth and he likes it when people imitate what he is doing. it’s really hard for him to sit still. he loves to be moving around and his attention span is about one minute max. i spend about 1 hour with him each day and we have a pretty good pattern going…. we go outside to go for a walk, we get about 10 steps and he stops to take his shoe off (he loves to take his shoes off), so then we stop and put his shoe back on… we walk some more and he stops to pick up some rocks or rip some leaves off a bush and then he puts them in his mouth and i take them out of his mouth (he puts everything in his mouth)…. we continue this for about 20 minutes until we reach the swing set… we stay there for a little while… sometimes we play with a big soccer ball that is deflated because he always bites it… then we head back and continue our routine to his house. he is very physically straining because he is so strong and he never really wants to walk where i want him to. he also doesn’t realize his own strength, so he is always grabbing me and other people and you really have to watch him because he could really hurt someone if he’s not careful. i also learned very quickly that he bites… and really hard. the first day i bent down to put his shoe on he took a huge bite of my arm and i had this big bruise for a couple weeks. the thing is he never does anything maliciously… he’s always smiling and laughing when he’s biting and grabbing people, so it’s hard to get too mad at him, but we are working on helping him to be calmer. overall my time with kaki is fun, he’s a really sweet kid, plus it’s a great cardio workout for the day!back to the big city: next week is the last week for the summer program so all the summer volunteers will be going home. so, this weekend my roommate, kelly, and i headed to the capital so that one of the other volunteers who will be leaving next week could see it. i remember being really happy to leave the craziness of the big city back when i was in language school but coming back to it this weekend was actually really fun. this place is like anything i've every experienced in my life. i don't really know how to explain it... other than it's just craziness. the people here are nice (the men maybe a little too nice) and fun, but they just have a very different way about them then people back in the states. i really don't know how to explain it other than as my roomate kelly says, "a country of characters". and every day is an adventure, you honestly never know what to expect or what is going to happen. at first it was hard and different, but this weekend i kinda just learned to enjoy the madness of it all. i just learned that you gotta just laugh here and learn to go with the flow.
i want to believe: at the risk of everyone knowing what a huge nerd i am, i will share this little story… so every since high school i have been obsessed with this little show called the x-files. it went off the air six years ago and even since all the die hard fans (myself included) have been patiently awaiting the promises of a new movie. so you can imagine my disappointment when i learned that the movie i had been waiting years for would be coming out a month after i moved to the dr. so last weekend (july 25) i had a little pity party for myself that i couldn't see it, but i decided that on my trip to the capital this weekend i was going to find some way to see it or buy a copy on the streets. so we get to the capital where we found out that the movie isn't out in theaters here yet, but...... down by where we are staying the streets are just lined with bootlegged movies (for the record, i do not support stealing music and/or movies, however sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures, and chris carter if you ever happen to read this please know that i have every intention of seeing the movie in theaters and buying a real version when it comes out!!). so anyway, i am searching and searching through all these movies and then i saw it and i screamed and i think i totally freaked out the two girls i was with, but i just picked up the movie and held it in my hands and the guy selling the movies just looked so confused and i turned to him and forgot every spanish word i know because i was filled with so much excitement. so i stood there for like a minute with a huge smile and finally remembered how to say, "cuanto cuesta?" and he told me 100 pesos ($3). i turned to my friends and told them that i probably just broke every good bartering rule and i was sure i was getting ripped off (i think they are usually like 40 pesos)... but i really didn't care. he could have said almost any price and i would have given it to him. then i just looked at him and said, "i'm so happy" in english and he just looked at my like i was crazy.... and looking back on it, i probably looked like i was. anyway... it's the little things here that bring excitement to my life. so i spent that night sitting on the floor of our dark hotel room watching my bootlegged copy on my laptop with my headphones as my two friends went to sleep. the quality was horrible and i couldn't hear or see a lot of what was going on, plus you can hear the people in the theater where it was being recorded... so it definitely wasn't exactly the way i imagined seeing the new x-files movie (seeing the midnight showing at the cine capri with my crazy x-files friends with a big mountain dew and popcorn)... but it was definitely very dr-esque."if God created shadows, it was to better emphasize the light." - pope john XXIII
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