Our First Day with the Kids

Well the day began an hour earlier than initially expected; Prisi called us last night to let us know she had to go in early to finish setting up the room and we decided it'd be better to ride with her early than have to catch a bus. We got there, helped out a bit, then I went downstairs to meet and greet with the early parents and their kids. The kids are all adorable and the parents were all either very grateful or very shy. We're only allowed to speak in English when there are kids around, and most of the parents don't speak English so they were a little intimidated by being greeted in a language they don't speak. One lady spoke very good English, though.
We were originally going to spend 30 minutes in each classroom helping out and showing our faces and I started in the kindergarten room. When I introduced myself, a very dignified-ly dressed mother would translate what I said for the parents and the kids were off in space anyway. Her English was fairly good, too, but sometimes she said things that came out awkward. I was distributing finger paint for the kids and their parents to put their hand prints on construction paper and I came to the table where this lady, her daughter and her husband were playing with the paint and the paper. The father was joking around like he was going to green hand-print my $65 dress shirt and I pretended to joke around with him when in honesty I was ready to kick his hand. Then after I explained (in English) that I understand Spanish, I just can't speak it because the kids need to hear me speaking in English the father immediately said he wanted to teach me all the "malas palabras" in Spanish, that I should hang out with him and learn what Spanish is really like. I did the jokingly "Well, thank you, yeah," and laughed and the mother, the very dignified-looking lady, came up to me and said "He wants to teach you all the 'fuck yous'." My first reaction was did anybody else hear that? Turns out nobody did because if anybody heard it, especially a four-year-old kid, it wouldn't have been funny but nobody heard so I just said "Okay," and walked away so I could laugh. I had to laugh. I told all the other teachers after all the students and parents left and we all had a good laugh about it.
There's a new kid, Carlos, who's in first grade and he can already read and write in both Spanish and English. He grew up in Texas and has Ecuadorian parents and already knows his multiplication tables. We had a good conversation about his favorite games and sports and colors.
After the kids left, we had our little meeting where I told my story about the very dignified lady and then we had to move all the books from the library to a new room that is going to be the new library. All the books are categorized into several subsets so I decided to just carry the bookshelves and let the girls manage the transfer of the books, keeping them in the same order they were originally. After that we Leslie and I ended up downtown where we ate lunch at a $1.25 almuerzo place, which all things considered wasn't too bad. The tomato juice was more like a fruit juice than the tomato juice we're used to. It was sweet and not so tomato-y.
We then went on a mission to find Harry Potter in Spanish so that Leslie can use it to help her learn the language in a way she'll enjoy. When we finally found a libreria that wasn't just a school books store the guy was closing up to go home for lunch; he had just pulled down the metal shield that kept anybody from vandalizing his shop. When we told him we were looking for a Harry Potter book he was more than excited to open his store back up and find it for us. We weren't just muddling around not wanting to buy anything; the man was going to make a sale so he was overjoyed to let us into his store and get home late for lunch. The only one he had was Harry Potter 7, ten bucks. We also ended up in a DVD store where we bought a collection of the first five Harry Potter movies for a dollar fifty. That's a dollar fifty for all five movies, thirty cents each. Bootleg stuff is fairly common down here because the government doesn't care about copyright laws. We then headed to the central park to get some ice cream. We ended up in a good expensive ice cream place where Leslie got Nutella and I got Nata. When I say that she got Nutella, I mean that this place turned Nutella into an ice cream, and they did it very well. It tastes exactly like Nutella, except it's ice cream. The nata was no good. At least, it wasn't anything like nata in Salamanca. I think it doesn't ever get appropriately hot in Cuenca to really appreciate nata ice cream. In Salamanca, after having played several hours of ultimate frisbee down by the river and making the 40-minute trek uphill to the Plaza Mayor in 90-degree weather, the moment nata hits your tongue you are instantly refreshed. Your body doesn't realize that it's not sitting in an air conditioned room. Nata in Salamanca is that good. The stuff here just tastes like cream.
We then tried to catch a bus back home, and intentionally went the wrong way just to see where it would end up. Way out in the boonies past the airport and the military base and civilization. That was a mistake. We finally got home late this afternoon, exhausted and hungry. And that's pretty much everything important that happened today.