“Deja el machete!,” usually isn’t something one would say during the middle of an English lesson, but today it seemed very fitting. Today I headed down to the Centro de Acopio office where I have been teaching English. The number of children who attend the class has been dwindling and there a few kids in the community I can count on being there when I teach. Today I expected the usual two or three kids. I began reading a little book for beginning english, “The Lion and the Mouse,” to the children. It is a very beginning level book and I helped to explain what the story was saying in Spanish. (Thanks for the books mom, they are great!) The kids loved the book so much they wanted me to keep reading it over and over, though I stopped after the third time around. For some reason more kids started showing up and all the sudden there were like 17 children! I was a little over loaded, so of course I whipped out some songs which always seem to keep them entertained. It was really great to have so many kids come by and seem interested, well at least interested in seeing what was going on… After having to yell at some to stop running around and screaming, playing with the motorcycle and doing scary things with machetes, I called it a good day’s lesson and had to shew them out.

Right now I am in the works of finding a house to rent for the next 21 months. So this will be my first time on the other side of the rental negotiation as the tenant, after 5 years as the landlord…Anyway, there really are no places set up for renting here in town but there are a few that are for sale. I have been asking around the community to try to find available housing as well as walking around with my host mom to look at the prospective houses. There are really only a few houses and none are actually ready to be moved into, they will need a bit of fixing up first. The other day the owner of one of the houses came by to speak with me and show me the house she owns. I believe she moved away about three years ago and no one has been living there since. We went into the house and disturbed the family of bats living inside, who began flying all around the room. So it sounds like we made a deal and I will be renting this house. My host dad has arranged for the men in the organization to help fix up the house I will be renting, so we will be buying block and cement and creating a bathroom, fixing up the walls, putting in a sink and maybe making a window to give it some more ventilation. I am a little worried about how the house will hold up during the rainy season, but it looks like I don’t have too many options. I really am hoping that the water won’t pass through the 6 inch cement wall at the bottom of the door….yikes. On the bright side there is room in the back for a small garden!

Tomorrow I am heading into the city and then going to teach an English class up the road in one of the other towns on the way to Quininde. Right now there are so many potential projects I could do it is slightly overwhelming! I have so many ideas and resources, but there is only so little time (not to mention I still have a hard time communicating any of these ideas to anyone).