Straight to the top of the class...

Sorry I´ve not blogged for the last few days - they´ve been whizzing by in a routine of walk to work with more books for my new classes (the ladies at the stationery store know me very well by now), classes, then I mark all the way through lunch so I don´t have to carry the bleedin´things back again, power-walk home to grab some food (usually a whole green pepper, cucumber - they´re a third the size of ours - two plum tomatoes, a corn on the cob and a bread roll from Elsa, the grocer across the road) before 1.5 hours Spanish with Norma.

Late arvo, we usually take a walk into town for yet more stuff for our projects. C wanted some more cheap clothes too, his stuff is too nice (I was better prepared, my travel/festival stuff is mainly Primark) and ends up getting trashed by the kids. On Tuesday he´d had a dirty nappy thrown at him which hit him square on the chest.

Wednesday we bought some outdoor paint so they could paint goals and a penalty area (although C is not sure where any of the 17 balls he´s so far brought into the refuge have gone), plus a few simpler things like hopscotch so the kids have some games that they can´t lose, steal, hoard or trash.

That evening we had a crisis meeting with V. I won´t bore you with the details - C monopolised the conversation, Catherine didn´t much chance to speak and I´d heard it all before, so I got up halfway through and went online for a bit.

C said to me earlier that he thinks Catherine is being too sunny and ´Mary Poppins´, unrealistic in what they can achieve, whilst he is ´just being realistic´, but I know which take is slowly driving me ´un poco loco´.

V then turned to me and asked how I was getting on. Before I had chance to answer, she said that Graciela and Fabiana loved me and had said I was the BEST volunteer they had ever had...YAY!!! Anyone who knows me knows I can be quite tough on myself, so you can imagine this was a massive boost.

My only question to V was as I´m loving the school and the refuge sounds like hell on earth, could I stay doing what I was doing?

She said they have a break for 2 weeks in July (winter holidays!) so I may do a short stint at the refuge still, or, she suggested another refuge which is smaller and apparently better run. She was, to be fair, embarrassed that her volunteers had had such a bad experience and actually said that she would look into i-to-i not supporting that project any more, which probably made us all feel worse. What happens to the kids then?

Apparently the lady who runs it is seriously ill in hospital, has been for a month, which is why it´s all descended into a filthy, wild, chaotic mess. The children, C said, have reverted to animals. I´m thinking Lord of the Flies, but smellier.

In the end though, C agreed to see the week out and think about things.
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Thursday 15th May

C visibly struggled to face the day when his alarm went off. I felt guilty as I, by contrast, was full of beans and raring to go, day two with 6b. (No 5b, so I had a tiny lie-in).

He moaned about having to do the painting in the yard, how they wouldn´t be able to get a quiet moment to do it, how he was really rubbish at drawing, etc etc. I sat down and drew him a few simple shapes and ideas, memories from my own playground. One was a winding snake, stripey, really simple - with a head and forked tongue. We´d run along the path that windy snake made for hours if we could...I´ve no idea why to this day.

C frowned. He didn´t feel capable of drawing a snake, so I quickly came up with other games that could be done with parallel lines and numbers, making myself later for work in the process.

Everything I did made no difference. Frustrated and exhausted from lack of sleep, I let rip.

I said since we´d arrived he´d done nothing but moan, every conversation had to be monopolised by how bad it was for him, he´s moaned so much he´s managed to put me off the other project too, yet Catherine was coping, how come? That we all have our troubles, nothing is ideal for any of us, but that´s what we´re here for and he should just get a grip and GET ON WITH IT. My project was difficult at first too - and I´m the only volunteer there, it could have been a lonely existence - but I just got stuck in. PLUS when I do try to help him by listening, advising or helping in a practical way (the games, helping them buy special paint for the tarmac in my slightly-better Spanish, paying for his project equipment with the money I raised), all he does is moan some more, and frankly, I was getting SICK of it.

He looked at me, stunned at my sudden outburst, thanked me curtly for bringing those points to his attention and walked out of the door, without a kiss goodbye.
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My earlier rant seemed to work. When I called C later to check in (and apologise), he said he´d talked to Catherine, pulled his socks up and decided he wasn´t going to let those kids down.

And as luck would have it, Catherine could paint snakes.
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I was exhausted that evening so had a disco nap 7-8.15 and woke disorientated, thinking first it was the middle of the night and where was C, then ´Oh God, I´ve slept in and I´ve got 4a and 4b today!´. A quick check of the time and I calmed down and read a bit of (a now out-of-date) ´Heat´ magazine. I´m rationing these silly little tastes of home.

That night all of us i-to-i ´voluntarios´ (Catherine, London girls Jen & Kat who are doing C´s next football project for 2 weeks, Gail and Katrina - an American mother and daughter working on a cnservation project for two weeks, and later, Glaswegian Adam and Irish Steve who work part-time at the refuge after their footie project - I hadn´t met the guys until tonight, but knew the rest from our orientation day) went to an Argentinian barbecue at V´s.

C tucked into the meat like a man possessed (lovely options for the 3 veggies...) and we all swapped our experiences voraciously, OD´ing on the fact we could speak English all night and not have to struggle for vocabulary for once.

Poor Katrina was sporting a rather fat bandage on her finger where a monkey had bitten through her finger (to the bone, apparently - yeuk - she´s getting rabies jabs) which made a great story, but I did have to reel C in from telling them about the dirty nappy incident as we were all eating.

Party boys Adam and Steve were up for going bowling. I am a bit of a demon on the lanes, the only sport I´m any good at, weirdly, so I instantly got a bit competitive and decided to stop drinking more ´vino tinto´.

Then Catherine pointed out it was gone 1am and I suddenly got tired, realising I would have 50 new kids to cope with the next day in two classes, plus 50 more books to carry in, and there was just no way I´d do it functioning on 3 hours sleep. C decided to stick with me, and so us 3 party poopers left the kids to play. I feel responsible for my kids though, and just can´t do this job with a hangover (a state which is virtually *de rigeur* in media!)

It´s alright for the others - they just swing the kids around, kick a ball about, paint a ´muriel´, muck out a monkey, and then they´re done. I´m shaping young minds!

We promised the guys we´d join them Friday at´Power´, (seeing as we never made it that far last Saturday...I´m such a lightweight...)
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Friday: I bounded into work, looking forward to the day ahead.

I bought 2 reams of photocopy paper for the school copier on the way in as I was warned by Fabiana not to make too many copies as the school hadn´t got much money...but equally, the kids have no textbooks, so what am I to do?!

On Wednesday when when I was marking 6b´s work, I realised that the kids were making the same mistakes - and it wasn´t my writing, either. Their blackboard is so old and faded, it´s almost impossible to see anything written on it. How they learn anything, I have no idea. I brought it up with V and C & I are going to try and find some blackboard paint and sort it out. The only time they can let us do it is Saturday.

Fabiana thanked me for offering to do this. She told me that things were even worse two years ago and that last year three of the teachers, including herself, had taken it upon themselves to paint the school throughout. I asked how many days it took and she said ages, they did it little by little and paid for it out of their own pocket. And these ladies don´t get paid very much.

Fabiana had asked me what I did in England and when I explained I used to work for Él Telegrafico´ but gave it all up to come out here and now had ´no trabaje´ when I go back, she shook her head disbelievingly and said I was mad.

You check my highlights though...did you have as good a week as this...?

1) Today, some of the boys from 6a running over as I walked through the school gates, excitedly yelling ´Hi teacher!´ and asking me if I was taking their class that morning. I was secretly thrilled they looked so crest-fallen when I said not, but they did perk up when I added ´a lunes!´ (on Monday).

2) Pretty much every child I´d taught waved, smiled or yelled ´Hello!´ or ´Hi Teacher!´ as I walked to and from classes / the staff room today.

3) A pudgy boy, one of the ones who gave me a hard time on Monday, high-fived me yesterday.

4) One of my little girls in 4b today returned shyly as I was packing up and gave me a wrapped boiled sweet.

5) All the kids falling over themselves to carry my bags, books, etc to the staffroom after lessons.

6) The look on the kids´ faces when they realise the pens I handed out did not have to be returned and are, in fact, for them to keep.

7) The fact that I´ve told all my classes I´m ´veinte-siete´ (27) years old and they believe me. (One little boy, 10, even put up his hand at this information and informed me that ´Mi madre es veinte-seis´ - 26)

8) Me understanding and joining in on staffroom banter. Cristina keeps trying to get me off with the maths teacher, who, according to her is ´muy lindo´. I informed her ´hablo uno nobio´, which isn´t as weird as it sounds, as the Spanish pronounce ´b´ as ´v´ and the word actually means ´boyfriend´. (Which means I´m a ´nobia´. Nice.)

9) Graciela the Head, giving me a badge that the staff wear and telling the rest of the team that I was now a colleague. I proudly put it on.

10) ´Torta de chocla´ (a local corn cake) and salad for lunch, in the sun. Healthier, tastier and cheaper than anything my chums at the Telegraph will find in the canteen, I thought.

11) Having a conversation and proper banter with the cafe owner and his staff in Spanish.

12) Fabiana having saved me a slice of her birthday cake and offering it to me today. Yum.

13) THIS IS THE BEST ONE. Marking a little boy´s work yesterday who had made lots of mistakes in my first class. I hadn´t wanted to discourage him, so merely put ´Buen´, whilst his classmates got ´Muy buen, Augustin!´ and a red cartoon ´Goofy´ stamp (one of those self inking things) with the word ´GOOD!´underneath it. If their work is faultless, they get ´Éxcelente, Brenda!´, the Goofy stamp AND a shiny sticker (the stakes are higher now I´m running low).
Day two: his second set of work was *faultless*. He´d raised his game to get the reward! I wrote ´Excelente! Perfecto, Santiago!´, stamped Goofy on his work and adorned the page with a shiny red ladyird, ecstatically.

I started thinking yesterday that if I´m making that much of a difference to that little boy in 24 hours, then what could I do in a year? I casually mentioned to C that I could afford to live out here and do this for longer if I rented my house out in London. He said nothing.

Anyway C´s back and I need a disco nap if I´m to give the *real* twenty somethings a run for their money tonight :)