The Routine

Wednesday I was till tired from Monday's soccer practice. I hadn't slept very well the past two nights since I kept waking up feeling that something was crawling on me, but I never found anything.

After an uneventful morning in which it was difficult to concentrate on my programming projects, I headed over to the soccer field for practice. Practice is supposed to start at 12, but for most events, one doesn't show up at the appointed hour here. This is not true for work or professional sports or school, but this is how our players saw practice. Coach Gaspar and I were ready to go at 12, but didn't have a quorum of ready players until 12:45 or so.

We ran them and did many of the same drills I use in Tucson, and when it started to rain hard, we continued. We did lunges, sprints, the most exhausting exercises. I left with a real sense of satisfaction -- this team is starting to take shape, the coach & I work well together, the players are working hard and we have a lot to teach them.

I'm getting a little Tz'utujil from it. After we scrimmaged today, he was lecturing the team in their language, which hasn't added words in centuries, but borrows from Spanish. For some reason they tend to use Spanish numbers and dates, and since most of the soccer terms are borrowed words, I can catch xome of it. Today I understood "Chamuc mojon puest," and I was so proud. No assigned positions in a pick-up game.

But most of the time, after he talks to the team I have to say, "Maybe the coach already said this, but..."

Anyhow, Wednesday, after practice I was exhilarated and very wet. I rode my bike home, not minding getting splashed by passing trucks and tuc-tucs. Took a shower to get all the sand off my body and put on clean dry clothes. All of a sudden I was famished.

Geneen agreed to go out for fried chicken and tortillas. I assured her the rain was about to let up, and as soon as we stepped out, it did. Three minutes later it was pouring hard, but we were prepared in raincoats and with an umbrella.

We rode a tuc-tuc to the market, where there are four or five fried chicken places within a block of each other. On the way, we drove through deep puddles, and got wet again. We passed long stairway alleys with so much water streaming down that they looked like waterfalls. The people descending the stairs were taking a big risk, I thought. Imagine losing your footing in that!

As we were buying chicken, two members of the team passed by, slapping hands with me and calling me 'prof'. Then we walked around the corner to where some ladies make tortillas. I frequent their business rather than others because they sometimes offer black (you may call them blue) corn tortillas as well.

Six inches of water rushed downhill on the side ofthe street in front of their grill. We had to stand in the rushing water waiting as they made our order of 25 cents worth of tortillas. One of them (María) pointed at Geneen and asked me "Her name is Genny, isn't it?" It turns out Geneen had met two of the three in the Hospital a few weeks before.

They were very smily and talkative -- they must be used to me by now.

We bought sodas in a store a few doors down, and grabbed a tuc-tuc back to Hospital, where I wolfed down my food, giving Canchita the bones, which she later vomited.

Canchita is the hospital dog and merits a blog entry of her own.

Afterwards I tutored Edwin in math and English. He's 15 and attends a boarding high school in Guatemala City, but, since the government closed all schools for these two weeks due to swine flu, he's got time on his hands.

That was my Wednesday, and my Thursday was nearly equal, except instead of the trip to get fried chicken, I gave a math class for the nurses. This is our third or fourth one, and I started with high expectations, that these are people who have to administer medication and must be pretty adept at certain things, such as ratios. Each class I've had to lower the bar -- today we discussed some very basic concepts about fractions, such as how to represent them graphically. Things like two-thirds. I'm not saying they're stupid, not at all, but that they come from a culture and an educational system that does not stress these skills.