Boring day at work

Let me preface this by saying that I truly love when children perform. I think its super important to support creativity in kids and was always happy to go to one of my sisters' plays or band performances. I'd like to think that years of sitting through countless recitals has helped me develop a forgiving ear. That being said, our band here needs help. Serious, serious help. It's like they handed the kids some instruments and said, "Good luck!" They all play at the same time, but for the life of me I can't figure out if they're supposed to be playing a song or if they're just trying to see who can make the most noise. And lucky me, they've been doing in front of the clinic for the last hour! I think they're supposed to be "sending off" the visitors that have been here from Canada and it seems to be working well; I've never seen anyone load a car that fast before. Haha, ok, I'll stop being a jerk. All I can say is I hope the next batch of volunteers has a few more music teachers in it.

I've had a hard time concentrating on work today (though I can't solely blame my spontaneous orchestral accompaniment). It's really hard to write a Power Point presentation on a topic that I'm not really interested in, in a language that gives me a headache. Every time I try to do research I read one line and immediately think of 50 things that I would rather be reading. Staying focused has been a slight problem (as evidenced by me writing a blog post in the middle of the day). I'm giving myself twenty minutes to clear my head and then I'm going to get back to the grind, hopefully with a little more enthusiasm/determination.

Right now is fly season here which is just as enjoyable as it sounds. There are literally hundreds of house flies everywhere. You can't sit at your kitchen table without being constantly bombarded by them; a lot of people have taken to eating outside since the flies seem to prefer being indoors (or maybe they're just more tolerable when not sharing an enclosed space with them). We have fly traps everywhere but they're only moderately effective. We've been setting up more elaborate traps to trick them, like laying out a plate of food and then draping sticky paper on top. With the cold nights, the flies get really slow and just crawl all over the counters and floors; you can easily just walk around with a sticky trap and pick them up with it. It's pretty nasty. I'm hoping that this is a temporary thing and the flies aren't planning on sticking around all summer or else I might be eating my meals in my bedroom pretty soon (which so far has managed to stay fly-free). The two hottest months here are April and May and I don't know if that'll help or hurt things (my theory is a bit pessimistic but I'm holding out hope). Even though I don't really like hot weather I'm looking forward to the season change. The nights here are so cold but apparently not enough for us to be given thick blankets. Then again, I've spoiled myself the last few years with amazingly thick down comforters, so it's no surprise that I'd be cold with these thin little numbers they have here. I've managed to squirrel away a nice pile of them to help a bit, but I'm looking forward to getting to the point where the nights stay around the 50 degree mark. After that is rainy season which I REALLY want. I'm sure I'll change my tune once it's here, but it's really odd not having ANY rain for half the year. I've been here for three months and it's rained exactly two times, both of which caused the locals to proclaim how crazy global warming is and how they've never experienced this kind of weather before. I was super excited both times; I miss sitting inside listening to the sound of heavy rain. And how do all these plants stay alive with no water for eight months?! It makes no sense to me. The weather in the Northeast is much more understandable to me.

Okay, what else can I share with you... I started my monthly workshop with the HIV kids yesterday. It went really well, I've spent a lot of time with them so we're relatively comfortable together. Yesterday was more of a "hang out in the same space" day, we'll actually start talking about medical stuff next month. I learned something interesting though, apparently the stereotypes about Justin Bieber never made it down this way. All the guys (16-18 year old kids who are relatively cool) were thoroughly disappointed that I didn't have any of his songs on my computer. For a split second I thought about downloading some for them, but then I decided I'd rather help them develop better taste in music. I do need to download some Spanish music on my computer though, all I have now is English stuff which they seem to lose interest in really quickly.

Another lesson that I learned yesterday is that it's a good idea to visit the cafeteria workers mid morning. Tis Rosa needed to ask them some questions so I tagged along. They were busy preparing beef stew for lunch and gave us each a bowl. IT WAS SO GOOD! It reminded me a lot of my Mom's Irish stew which I've been craving hardcore the last few weeks. Here's some other dish that they're making to go along with the stew. I though it was salad until they added water to it and started boiling it, so who knows. Maybe cabbage and carrots? Anyway, that's not the important part. Check out the size of that pot! And I support cooking anything that requires you to use two hands to operate a wooden spoon. Love it.

This week on the homesteading front I've been researching using chickens to help with making compost, framing a simple building and off the grid toilet options! (I use an exclamation point to show that this is very exciting!) You should see the pages of notes I have on this stuff, too bad no one here wants workshops on how to build an outhouse.