Happy Birthday Dad!

I'm gonna go ahead and not explain this blog's title...

So what happened after the excitement of the mugging? Hmmm Monday and Wednesday (with the occasional Friday) are officially my internship days. I THOUGHT classes started Monday, but it was just an orientation for the parents, so instead I worked on some stuff for my honors project and had the director look over it. I got some really good feedback on my questionnaire so I'm pretty excited. My goal is to have it submitted to Etown's IRB by next week... pray for me. Tuesday was class... I can't remember anything too significant right now... And Wednesday I FINALLY met the kids! Like a true social worker, I have naturally already chosen all of my favorites :)

After Wednesday and Friday I'm still unsure of what my responsibilities will be, I was sort of just getting to know the kids. Both days I spent the first half of the school day with the "highest-functioning" kids and the second half with the "lowest-functioning". --The social worker at the center is also a teacher and this is how she introduced me to her students (in front of them), "So as you can see we have a little bit of everything. Down syndrome (points), mental retardation (points), hyperactivity (points)," and on cue the kid she pointed at jumps out of his chair and screams. Like talk about the labeling theory. It was bizarre. Especially because this was the "highest-functioning" group, with kids as old as 13.... like THEY UNDERSTAND YOU. Ugghhh. Anyway the "lowest-functioning" group has 7 students. None of them talk and 3 or 4 of them don't have control of their bowels. There's only one teacher in this room, so really she's more of a babysitter,.. and there's just barely any stimulation. It's so sad. But there is a little girl in this group, with Down Syndrome and I'm going to steal her before I leave. I'm sure of it. She is sort of the cutest thing in the world.

Thursday I had class again... Oh yes I remember the highlight of Tuesday. Since Liz dropped jewelry-making I'm the only gringa in the class.. The teacher is constantly calling me out like "Can you understand me?" but not in a reassuring way, in a like are you slow way... I kind of dislike him. So Tuesday he was "teaching" us how to use these measuring instruments that are pretty much identical to rulers. So he shows us like 6 different measurements, because we're idiots and every time he puts it right in my face and says, "do you see?" So finally I said(in Spanish), "yeessss... we use the same number system in English..." and everyone laughed and he's stopped treating me like a 2year old. yay

Back to Thursday... basically my leadership teacher is awesome but I'm too lazy to explain haha... Then after class we went to Andres' house and we all made ceviche/drank wine, super classy like. It was delicious. Friday I had my internship in the morning and then I met Liz and Lily for lunch in La Mariscal. Before I met them though, I stopped at the tattoo place, Diablo Loco. I've heard really good things about this place. There are 3 guys who run it and they seem awesome, the place is really clean, etc. BUT when he asked me where I wanted it and I said ribs, his response was "*intake of breath* do you have any other tattoos?"
"yes, two."
"Oh, ok good... because ribs are the worst..."
Then when I went back after lunch to put down the deposit another guy was in there and asked what I wanted and where. When I told him, his response was "you're brave.. really brave." So.... great. Vamos a ver. I go back Wednesday to see the sketch... I'm so excited!

So we ate lunch at this little outdoor cafe and guess what I ate. Guess!
Caprese salad!!a;sjfl;ajkdf It was wonderful. And the weather was just perfect... we sat out there for hours. Afterwards we walked around and got ice cream and shopped a bit. Then yesterday 5 of us from BCA went to Diego's house in Pifo for a U.S. vs Ecuador drinking competition... which was essentially boys vs girls. I had an awesome time, drank too much, etc etc. We ended up losing. Rude really... no mercy, even on the anniversary of September 11th. Oohhh we also made s'mores...sort of. We couldn't actually find real graham crackers, but when you're hungry enough...

Today I was supposed to do homework, but somehow accomplished NOTHING all day... Liz and I walked to the supermarket and that's pretty much all I did.