Today

My day had a relatively positive note today - the running water at the school being restored. There was a leak in the plumbing at the school and we lost the water for two and a half hours. When we got it back everyone had the same needs to take care of. Without water, in addition to the toilets not working, there´s no washing of hands and no lunch in the cafeteria so it´s good that it came back. People started brainstorming what to do for lunch for the kids at school supposing that water wasn´t restored. Someone suggested fried eggs as a recipe not requiring water. I suggested beer. They reminded me that the kids can´t drink beer. I´m 27 and I can´t remember anymore life back when I couldn´t legally have a beer with a meal. I have a friend who works for an international relief agency called Intermón Oxfam. They are providing clean water right now for folks in Ecuador who were evacuted from their homes after flooding last month. Intermón Oxfam is concerned with getting the folks clean water for drinking and bathing. It´s a really good thing what they´re doing down there, and today I was reminded how necessary clean running water is. I´m stupid and I need to be reminded of stuff like that.

I don´t notice teachers in my school telling the kids to walk in the hallways; that seems to be a principal preoccupation in the US. Here in the hallways it´s like an all day field day - kids SPRINTING back and forth from classrooms to bathrooms. It´s hilarious and I think it´s good. I don´t mean to say that teachers NEVER put their class in order to walk down the hall - it´s au contraire. When the whole class goes somewhere together, the teacher puts them in order just like in the US.

Back to today - poor Abraham, the new kid in first grade. Today was his FIRST DAY and he was made to take an English test. I think that´s pretty rough. It wasn´t like a placement test for English class; it was a chapter test.

I chose not to share the April Fools´ Day pranks that I found on Wikipedia with any of the teachers because everyone was preoccupied with the running water (bathroom) problem. Bummer.

A teacher here was asking me today about smoking regulations in the US. She said we introduced smoking tobacco and we were now leading the fight to unintroduce it? As with most attempts to answer questions about my own country I realized that I didn´t know. I went to Wikipedia and believed what I read that official smoking bans date as far back as the 16th century - a ban on smoking by Pope Urban VII. (Weehee! Are you enjoying this journey through history. It´s brought to you by Wikipedia.) I read too that there was a string of smoking regulations during the 18th century in what is now Germany, that the Nazis imposed smoking regulations during their reign and that - what was the only thing I thought I knew about the US´s regs - the smoking regs are up to the states there.

Bla bla. Done.