Advertisement
Published: February 17th 2006
el tanquecito
Linday and our favorite and most valueable tool, el tanquecito
(the little tank)Hello everyone!
Well, Jenica left it up to me to write about the school we´re at now, but as usual, I procrastinated as much as possible until she cornered me and now, here I am writing to you all!
We are in Junin de los Andes in a little internet cafe with Pink Floyd and U2 playing at 8:43pm after a nice day of work. The school we are working at has abot 250 kids in it, mostly boys, and the girls all live off campus. The school is free and has a dormitorio for the boys (and girls in the city) and breakfast lunch and dinner. It is meant for Mapuche children and kids from lower income families that wouldn´t normally have an opportunity to go to school. As well as the normal school classes, the kids take cources in agriculture, nature, and animals (cows, sheep, llamas, chicken etc...) All of these can be found roaming the fields that surround the school. The food is horrible, and I think the cook knows that we always ¨go outside to eat¨ to throw our meals in the bushes...
We live with two Argentine girls (Fatima and Ana) who are travelling around to
this afternoon
just before coming to write emails we had a little coffee on the main street. unfortunately there were no croissants or sweets. what a pity. get to know their own country, and don´t speak english so we are forced to practice spanish, and a German (Benedikt) who we have become good friends with. We are learning many valuable phrases in german such as ¨you are a mean parrot¨ and ¨you are a big ass cow¨... very important to know incase one becomes stranded in a german speaking country... One of the things I like the best about Bene is his phobia of apples... when he was a kid, his teachers made him eat the skins of the apples (which he hated) and now can´t even listen to the sound of someone eating an apple or think about the crunch crunch or else he gets ¨goose pimples¨
We get up at around 8:30, and then water the new trees planted on the property. Usually this wouldn´t really take a long time, but when you factor in that the property expands a great distance, and there is only one water pump at the very beginning of it, this is a some what lengthy process.... There is a large tank on wheels that Jen and Steph pull and I push, and then a hose that connects at the
musica
in the evening the boys have free time, spent doing laundry, listening to music or playing music, it was great to be a part of this lovely summer evening under the full moon. bottom to water. We look a bit like oxen when we´re watering the plants, but it´s better then cleaning the deep dark corners of the kitchen. Thinking we would be good volunteers to help the cook out once, we did clean the kitchen, and we will never do it again. The girls had to clean up a greenish mess that was either super strong chemicals, or very rotten eggs, while I cleaned up what the cook called ¨juice of death¨ or the blood from meat that had been sitting in a broken fridge for at least a month. After that experience we haven´t eaten a lot of food from the kitchen.
Other then those chores we are busy cleaning the cob webs off the eaves of the school, and watering a field of dirt... - for some reason they think that if we put copious amounts of water on dirt at mid day, a beautiful, lush field will grow.... we´re not so sure...
The boys here are really great, we have played rugby with them, carved spoons with them, and drank mate with them. Some of the boys play guitare well and sang and played traditional songs from Argentina while
papagei
our great friend and most funny friend, (eggs) Benedikt from Frankfurt dancing the traditional dances for us. The staff at the school are wonderful and really care about the students they work for, the school is in a beautiful location in a valley surrounded by hills and a wonderful view of the volcanoe Lanin.
We are having one major problem here though. Forget the food, forget the heat, and the cleaning and watering... we are having a major earwig infestation. In our clothes, in our beds, in our food... they´re EVERYWHERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Well, that´s pretty much everything from here, we are going to a fiesta on the weekend with vendors and gauchos and parades and miniture ponies and famous fokelore singers, it should be a great time. We hope you are all doing well, we think of you all a lot, and miss you very much.
Lots of love
Lindsay
Advertisement
Tot: 0.353s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 19; qc: 72; dbt: 0.11s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
val
non-member comment
I'm so proud of you guys - keep up the good work!!