February 16, 2007
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The first week of
school is over, and Carnival is soon to begin. What a week. Yesterday Heitor
broke his arm, or has a crack in it or something. Today was only a half day,
and they are heading to the beach. Would you believe that this kid asked to
come to school? His family waited to leave and picked him up from school on the
way to the beach—broken arm and all. The kids really love the school.We gave out merits
today. It is like redeemable paper money things, and we will then have a
“shopping day.” Too bad the teachers couldn’t decide between two kids. What a
good problem to have! They really are a great group of kids. So we gave out the
reward to both of them. 20 merits. It is all the kids talk about—“I want to
learn the verse in English and get a merit!” “If I eat all my food will I get a
merit?” and so on. Adna told one kid he’d get a merit if she shared his snack
with me and he promptly offered me the whole snack. Heh. Speaking of Adna…she
eats erasers. I told her I would be writing about her, and she laughed. I like
Adna more and more. So she erases things on purpose, saves the rubber pieces,
and the pours them into her mouth. No joke. She had eraser crumbs on her chin.
It was so funny, but I couldn’t tell the rest of the class, or explain it,
because I have no clue what the word for “crumbs” is in Portugese.The week went really
well. Some days are alittle long, and by the time 4pm comes around I am very
ready for it. Yesterday I was attempting to teach 6 year olds “Duck, duck,
goose” but it turned into a tug of war to try to make them sit in a circle
instead.There are either an
over abundance of frogs here, or Brasilian frogs are exceptionally dumb. On the
road where I go jogging, some areas have run over frogs every couple feet. The
goal becomes missing the frog pieces rather than jogging. Sweating is rather
satisfying, at least when jogging, and you sweat after about 20 steps in the
weather. I counted. Some days you sweat before you start.Valentine’s day was
fun (in Brasil they celebrate something like it in June, but it is basically
only for boyfriends/girlfriends), as I had all the kids learn how to say “Happy
Valentine’s Day” (hey, “valentine” is a hard word for Brasilians to say) bribed
only with a little piece of candy. Amazing how quick they picked it up. They
are now counting the days until St.Patrick’s day when I told them I would break
out my candy again.
