Advertisement
Published: September 18th 2007
Edit Blog Post
¡Hola!
So another few weeks have passed and its difficult to know where the time goes. The days seem to merge into one and before i know it monday has turned into friday and friday has turned into sunday evening.
The project is ticking along nicely. I get there for about 8.40 (one day i´ll make it at my planned arrival time of 8.30, but this is mexico cabrones...10 minutes late is half an hour early). I have set up a timetable for therapy which of course never gets adhered to...mainly due to the fact i am now on Mexican time, and also because sometimes i just don´t want to work with a child that does nothing but scream for half an hour (in fact she screams for most of the day and it nothing to do with attending therapy, because therapy is fun. no word of a lie). I have assessed nearly every single child (with an assessment sheet i created myself) and now i am slowly but surely starting to work towards each child´s goals. Mostly this involves stretches to prevent contractures and maintain range of movement at all the joints, and i also do a lot
of work on sitting balance, and for those that can, standing balance. I am slowly stealing toys and bits of equipment from other rooms at the centre and i have finally found a shop that sells balloons (an important therapy tool 😊 i think i´m going to have to make my own beanbags! I have included some pictures of some of the kids that i work with. They are awesome (apart from the one that screams a lot...although having said that she is awesome too so long as i am not within 50 yards of her). Ernesto can put his legs in positions i wouldn´t have thought possible for anyone except the most talented contortionist and always has this wicked expression on his face, like somebody who knows they are just too damn cool. Jennifer and Ismael just never stop smiling and even though they are a little bit challenging (Ismael in particular) they make the day just fly by.
So that is work pretty much covered. Ooh apart from the fact that the teachers wanted me to pay an ridiculous amount of money for the cake fund (i guess they thought the foreign girl wouldn´t know any better)
Ismael
This kid is awesome and never stops smiling! but essentially they were asking me to pay 120 pesos (thats five pounds) for each cake. and i only got one slice. that makes it 5 pounds per slice, which i was a little outraged by. Anyway i´m avoiding the cake lady at the moment so i don´t have to pay any more. i eat enough at my house anyway so i don´t think i need any more cake.
Speaking of my house Alba is quite the little entrepeneur. Not only has she been making Jellys in the shapes of a wide variety of styles and themes(including a rather disturbing order for a hen party, which i think i will leave to your imagination), she has now moved onto cakes. which is amazing because she is currently going to classes, so every wednesday or thursday i get back from work and the fridge is full of cake. Now some of you may know that after 6 months in Brazil eating cake i encountered a few problems (namely i couldn´t fit into my jeans) but just one slice every now and again wont hurt?!
Weekends have basically involved going to San Cristobal. Last weekend Bety, Nick and I went
to visit one of Bety´s friends who was having a leaving party to go and live in America for a year. That was fun as Bety knows San Cris pretty well and took us to all the best places to eat. I also had the pleasure of watching a group of drunken English girls make idiots of themselves on the dancefloor. Obviously i do nothing of the sort.
The weekend just gone was a variety of Mexican holidays, which all conveniently fall around the same weekend. The most important being Mexican Independence day. A group of us went up to San Cris again, and the night generally involved a bit of tequila and shouting Viva Mexico. It was pretty good, but i have a few issues with San Cristobal...namely that it is just so full of tourists(yes i know that, stricty speaking i am a tourist too, but i feel like i have some reason to climb up on my soapbox and have a bit of a moan), the place just doesn´t feel quite Mexican. It feels like a very transient place. People are always just passing through (getting drunk) and as a result the Mexicans aren´t quite as
friendly and if you´re not careful you get to pay a special tourist price for everything. I´m really looking forward to my Spanish lessons finishing soon, so i can get further afield for the weekend and explore some different places. A trip to the beach is definitley on the cards quite soon i think.
I got to go to the Zoo the other day which was pretty awesome. It was set high on a hill just outside of Tuxtla and is home exclusively to animals native to Chiapas (including Jaguars, Pumas and a huge variety of big-enough-to sit-on rodents, many of which had escaped their enclosures and were wandering freely around the park (those of you who have visited Foz de Iguacu in Brazil will know the type I´m talking about). They are all (generally speaking) kept in large enclosures in a forest enviroment, so definitly worth a visit. I was slightly concerned by the number of poisonous snakes and spiders that live in Chiapas, and the informative maps telling me exactly where i could find them did not do much to ease my concerns. Especially as we saw some worringly large and poisonous looking spiders sitting happily in
San Cristobal de las Casas
Me and my friend Nick in front of the big yellow church. webs just above our heads as we wandered round the zoo. Anyway lots of fun was had by all, and we all made it back to Tuxtla intact and without any animal bites, so i think it was a pretty sucessful trip.
Not much else interesting to report... It hasn´t rained for a few days, so i´m a little concerned about where the water for my next bucket shower will come from. Mum...please don´t read the next few lines because you´ll only worry 😊 but i´ve now experiencd 2 earthquakes. Both quite early in the morning. The first was similar to what i imagine it might be like living next to a railway track when a big train rattles by. The second was a bit more scary as it woke me up. It felt like someone was at the end of my bed shaking it (which could have been what scared me more, thinking someone was in my room at 5am) but that lasted for about 15 seconds. I hope they don´t get much more powerful than that, but i think they´re a fairly regular occurance here. Oh and finally on my bit of random news, i have found
Bety, Nick and Me
Nick looks like a maniac here, but he assures me he isn´t (I´m not so sure). a cultural centre just round the corner from where i live which has 2 (!) pianos, plus there is the possiblity of piano lessons. This makes me very happy, as i am starting to get withdrawal symptoms for not playing for nearly 2 months. Damn i can´t believe i´ve nearly been here 2 months already.
And on that note, i will bid you goodbye and leave you with promises of more news soon.
Un grande beso para todos.
Nic x
Advertisement
Tot: 0.091s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 9; qc: 56; dbt: 0.0545s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Hels
non-member comment
Nics, please don't talk about those Iguacu animals. They make Graeme flip out slightly.