back to the written word

Ok, so it turns out that speaking is harder than writing for me. It takes a bit more energy to talk, and I'm not allowed the luxury of editing myself. I guess I could script my audio updates, but then that makes even more work for me, so where's the fun in that? So I am returning to written blog entries.
This week, two odd things happened: The first, which occurred on Sunday, was that after I awakened from a short afternoon nap, I discovered that some of the children had been locked in the house without any supervision, as far as I could see. I heard a clatter and saw that the girls were trying to get out by taking the screens off the windows. This doesn't work totally because the windows are the kind that have multiple panes of glass that are arranged like slats horizontally, and can be opened by the turning of a knob, so in order to escape, the girls would have to either remove each pane of glass individually, or else break them. Not an easy or cheap task. So when I saw the missing screen, I told Sara to put it back. She in turn gave me the finger. I walked over to where she had sat down and stood over her to be as intimidating as possible. I asked her, "Do you want to do moppings?" (the popular form of punishment here--one mopping means mopping the entire dining room/living room area, and children are usually given at least 10 moppings at a time for punishment) Sara looked away and ignored me. I was on my way to the pool and was actually late, so I didn't exactly have time to fight with her, so I just left. Before I left, I also saw that Sara was messing with the door handle with a meat fork. I didn't think that she could really hurt the door too badly the way she was handling it, but I decided to tell someone as soon as I could what was going on. I left the house, and before I came to somebody I could tell, I saw that the girls had gotten out of the house. I was annoyed because that meant that they had probably broken the door handle for the 3rd time in 4 weeks, and the most recent model was so new that I didn't even have a key for it yet. But on the other hand, I was annoyed at the parents for locking the kids in the house on a sunny Sunday afternoon. There is absolutely no reason to do that. If you do that, you're just asking for something to get broken, not to mention the fire hazard of it all. The second odd thing that happened this week occurred on Monday. I did not witness this, but Alexis did, so I rely entirely on her account. Apparently, during lunch Teresa and Moises got in trouble for trying to start a fire outside with some dry grass. When Mami Ana called the two over to her, Moises went willingly and Teresa put up a fit. Alexis looked away for a second, and then for some reason, Moises was the one crying and Teresa was still wimpering, but wasn't such a basket case as she had been before. Moises was hauled off into the boys' bedroom wing and Alexis assumed that he had been put in his room because she heard a door close. A little while later, she heard a little boy talking to Moises, asking him if he wanted to get out. Alexis looked down the hall and was confused because she saw that the door to Moises's room was open. She then noticed a board leaning across the hallway. She saw that it was leaning against the hall closet door. She then realized that Moises was IN that closet. The boy went away from the closet and Alexis didn't think that much of it until later, when she walked by the open closet door. Inside the closet were a garden hose and pieces of a broken door, which had nails sticking out of them! Moises had been locked in that closet, where there was practically no room for him, for at least an hour! That is simply not right.
Alexis and I have been talking to our new directors about our house parent situation. We've told them about how we're frustrated with how everyone is just waiting for the next person to fix it: the old administration told us to wait until the new directors arrived, the new directors are telling us to wait until they find new house parents to fill the position. In the mean-time, we're worried about the children's safety and our sanity. They are practically allowed to run wild because the parents won't exercise their authority and punish them properly and the SM's have little leverage for punishment. However, in a meeting we had with the directors on Monday night, Assistant Director Trevor Wilson told us that he had an idea: make the rules the kids' responsibility. He suggested a very Byron Kehlor/Love and Logic solution that included a house meeting with all the kids, letting them know that their living situation was their responsibility. We're going to let them have input and control over what kind of environment their home is. I really liked Trevor's suggestions, and I'm looking forward to when we can have that meeting. So far, we've been putting off the meeting because our real house parents were on their days off for a little while, but now that they're back, maybe we'll have the meeting soon.
Still surviving, still finding pleasures in the little things of life. We've had to go to San Salvador twice this week to take care of visa stuff, which is a bit of a bummer because it took up all of my day off with un-fun stuff. But it turned out not being too bad, because when we went today, all we had to do was sign our names again and take some pictures, and after they told us that we had to wait for 20 minutes, Tony (our driver/everything-we-could-possibly-need guy) decided that we could go get pupusas down the street. So we went, and they were sooo good! The salsa-like tomato sauce that went over them was waay good, and tasted a lot like my dream pizza, for some reason. Also, I tried some budin, a custard-like dessert. Wow, it is definitely my favorite thing to eat here. I will try it again and again. It's even better than flan, I think, and for those of you who know how much I like flan, that's really saying something! Also, on our way back home, we got ice cream in Opico and caught a ride with Papi Joel, who we just happened to see drive by at the right time, so that saved us 20 cents for bus fare (Tony had other errands to run, so we took a bus back to Opico). Then, I made my first ever box of cook & serve pudding (Thanks Peter!)and man, it was waaay good. I couldn't wait for it to cool all the way, so I ate some when it was hot, and more when it was still warm, and I think I'm converted. Forget cold pudding, hot pudding is where it's at! And then, I discovered a scale in the office today, and I've been feeling a little on the round side lately, so I weighed...and I was normal! So today has been a good day. Hope to hear from you all soon!