How Many Gringas Does it Take to Kick a Bad Kid Out of English Camp

    As I mentioned, we´re helping teach English at the high school. Because they grade school doesn´t have English class we´re teaching English workshops on Saturdays for the little guys. Last week was the first one and, much to our dismay, it was wildly successful. It was like that scene from "The Newsies", remember the one at the end of the movie when they set out to march and there isn´t a soul but then suddenly 10,000 appear and they all march together and its great. Ya. It was like that, except without the happy ending. I have no idea where all the kids came from. They just appeared. Out of the woodworks. 73 Peruvian devils. I´m sure the majority came just to see the gringas ("white girls"). I´m serious.

    We´ll just fast forward our attempts to teach them "hello, my name is" and get to the good part. It was raining (it hadn´t rained at all and hasn´t since. Just that day. Seriously? Seriously.) so we stuffed ourselves and the children into the Church. The rain also ment that they couldn´t leave. Most of the children aren´t Catholic so the Church is not a house of God, but rather a playplace with stone floors for sliding and really really good acustics. The day ended with Kelly trapped in corner, merrily playing guitar and having a sing along with a clump of kids who actually wanted to learn. This left the other 80 percent to have their way with the poor Church. The pews aren´t affixed to the floor, so by this time every last one of them is askew. There are children of all ages climbing over them, hiding under them, and pushing them to make barracades. They alternate between this and wrestling (or tag, for the calm ones) and yelling. Kelly was occupied, and Colleen is still just beginning to learn Spanish so this left me to tend to the savages. I resorted to sending them home. Yes, you Sebastian and Julius Ceasar and Rohellio, go home. Admittedly, I may have been more successful had I conjugated the verb correctly and used the right form of the command, but thankfully Colleen was an education major and has an impressive "teacher look" which worked wonders.

    The plan of attack for this week is to have some of the older girls living with the Sisters help us. They can maintain order and we shall teach. We´re also going to divide and counquer, so don´t think you can goof off or reak havoc in the back, because it´s gonna be a lot harder this week. Yes, we kicked children out of Church. And yes, we will do it again tomorrow if necessary. Bring it on, morenos.