A full day, but a great day!

Journal by: Jessica Nysenbaum

I’ve been a bit of a derelict team member as it’s now Wednesday morning. I wrote in my own journal yesterday evening and then fell asleep before doing this one. Susan and I fell asleep at 9:30 for the second night in a row. Our full days wear us out!

Susan and Sherri went back to Center 1 and Dean, Steve, and I went to Center 2. Steve and Dean got started on a labor project. They were priming a new outdoor bathroom and shower room. I went back to the same room as the day before. Ruben came and shook my hand and it was quite charming. We spent the morning coloring, drawing, and reading stories. It was a lot sietate te! as the kids were expected to stay in their chairs. It’s hard for a three year old to sit still of course and there was no free play time as there aren’t any toys in the art room. I also quickly learned who the group trouble makers were and there’s always one in a class! We had some morning excitement as a a mouse appeared. Anita discovered it and loudly screamed and all the boys wanted to go and see. It got chased into the kitchen where Steve watched the kitchen ladies chase it around until he was killed. At snack and lunch I was that the children weren’t allowed to leave the table until they ate all their food. I can’t imagine getting an entire group of American children to all eat the same thing.

After our lunch we stopped at the masapan store of one of the FUNDAC ladies. She sweetly gave each of us a masapan pin. We also arranged to go back Friday for a demonstration of how she makes the masapan figures. The afternoon English lesson didn’t happen as the tias needed to go supply shopping. Instead I joined Steve and Dean outside. Steve very patiently played foreman training us novices. Dean and I got in a fun conversation wondering if Americans have different accents when speaking Spanish. For example is there a NY Spanish accent and a Boston one? I quite enjoyed working on the painting. You can immediately see the results of your work. Before we knew it the bus was there and it was time to go to Mitad del Mundo.

The museum has a rather odd assortment of displays on indigenous people, including a pretty cool shrunken head. We also saw a shrunken sloth head. Most interesting of course were the displays on the effects of the equator. We saw an egg stand on it’s end, water effects, and took some fun group photos. Unfortunately, Kristina got sick. Luckily she feels better this morning and is ready for another day.