day in the life

I have been teaching my first grade students about colors.  Today when they learned all about colors and they understood what we were saying and they could do it on their own, I felt happy and successful.  I have also been talking every day with a third grader named Chris.  He helped me paint when we painted the school this weekend, and yesterday he told me that he skateboarded.  This helped me learn more about how I can communicate with people because now that we have a topic in common, we can talk more.

I have been learning new things in Spanish every day.  That is thanks to my teacher Vicky who taught me how to bargain.  Yesterday I helped Aaliyah bargain at the small market in the central plaza.

We have soccer matches a lot, at random times especially in the evenings when we are at Sevilla.  It is 3 people on a team and we play barefoot in the Sevilla courtyard.  Its fun, because its a bonding thing and playing soccer in Guatemala with Guatemalans like Chucho is something I wanted to do while being here.

Lastly, overall, I learned that I have a lot of things at home that I should take for granted but I don´t, and I realize that now. I realize what I have is great and I should accept it, and that people here actually live everyday to survive. Today I saw a little boy shining shoes in an ice cream shop, the customer was treating him terrible, when he had left, I went over to the boy and gave him three quetzales and he was very greratful. I had felt like I did a good thing.
- Emma Rippe (Ernesto)