Getting Things Done

Today I had three things on my agenda: locate peanut butter, do yoga, and practice Portuguese. It is now 5:30 p.m. here and I've only managed to do one of those things-I found peanut butter! It's a tiny container with a random no-name brand that cost me 7,000 pesos (with which I could buy 2 3-course meals with!) but I was in a bit of a desperate need for my American comfort food staple.

I did manage to seek out some English language institutes as well. After the Aussie girl who works for Colombia Reports told me how easy it was to get a teaching job, I figured why not try. The first place I went in to told me that one of their teachers was leaving and that they would hire me. We talked briefly, they went over their teaching 'methodology and asked me briefly if I had any experience (I told them I taught in Costa Rica and Mexico, only half of which is a lie) and I am going to go in tomorrow to discuss the teaching more and then give a sample class. Now I am the first person to understand that just because I speak the language does by no means qualify me to teach it, but Kirsten (the Aussie) reassured me it's not that hard and already having learned a second language helps teach others a language. When I come back to the apartment and shared this info with Giovanni, he informed that that institute I went to was a bit dodgy and his Dutch girlfriend who used to live here quit after a month or so of working there when they didn't pay her. I proceeded to inform him that 1. Dutch teaching English? Maybe that's why they didn't pay her (I'm aware that Europeans get taught like 6 languages at the age of 5, but still!) and 2. this is a USA English institute, so they don't want none of that European 'practiSe' and hard to follow accent. Anyhoo, we'll see tomorrow how it goes.

Besides that, my volunteer work at the Young Woman's Corporation is going well. Up until yesterday I was doing more administrative stuff, helping them design a blog to use instead of a website since they don't have the resources. After doing a bit of research I learned that a blog serves just the same as a website, and got a bit creative designing a header in Photoshop and adding photos to the site. It's still not up and running completely, but when it is I'll share. After doing a lot of office stuff, I had the desire to do something more personable with the organization. So yesterday I attended my first of the group meetings that they do in poorer neighborhoods with girls ages 10-16. The point of the meetings is for the girls to have a place to talk about anything, whether it be sex and violence related, or stuff about school, health, life, etc. About 1o girls showed up for the 2 hour meeting and we did an ice breaker to learn names (I had to revert back to Costa Rica and the infinite amount of games we came up with to play with the local kids) and then did some arts and crafts. One group worked on some sort of collage about family, themselves, and themes that mattered to them, while another group decorated a metaphorical migrating bird. I'm still not entirely sure how productive this was (I did not lead the group, it was a Dutch woman who works for the organization, the DUTCH people are everywhere here!), but the girls seemed to be having fun. It was a bit difficult with the age difference though. Most of them were around 11, while three girls were 15 but looked like they were 18 and ready for a night out on the town! They showed up all done up, with makeup and short shirts and shorts, discussing boyfriends and love. When they asked me how old I was and I told them, they looked shocked, saying they would have guessed 15! Later, a mother of one of the girls came and asked the Dutch woman (who is probably in her late 30s) if I was her daughter, something that wouldn't be unheard of here.