Bien criados

Yesterday I went to the boys´hogar as usual in the morning. Floy was a little bit more receptive to me, Ashley and Danielle than he had been on Monday (more on that situation later) which was nice. I stayed longer than usual because the one seventeen-year-old boy who lives there asked me to play chess with him so I did. He destroyed me. I thought I was reasonably good at chess but he definitely showed me otherwise. I want to keep playing now so I can get better, and then when I come back to Perú I´ll find him and challenge him to a re-match in which I´ll actually stand a chance.

I was late getting to the girls´hogar in the afternoon because my bus didn´t pass for almost 20 minutes! There is no such thing as a "bus schedule" in Perú but they usually pass pretty frequently, so I was pretty surprised that I had to wait so long. I´ve taken the buses so many times here that now I recognize the cobradores in a lot of them (a cobrador is someone who stand at the door of the bus and yells to the driver whether or not people are getting on or off at certain stops and is also the person who takes the fare from each passenger). So I got there about 45 minutes later than usual. Three new women from the States were there to help out. I kind of have the reputation of being the only one who is "fluent" in Spanish, and so I get a lot of volunteers coming up to me with a child dangling from their neck saying something unintelligible asking me what on earth is happening. Everything at the girls´hogar is so hectic! I never feel like there´s time to just relax like I do with the boys.

I was supposed to hang out with one of my Peruvian friends last night, but I wasn´t really feeling up to going all the way to the center, so I told him I wasn´t going to make it. Jackie and I spent time relaxing because I was so tired and she was feeling sick. All of our conversations usually end up with her speaking in English and me speaking in Spanish, telling her that she can speak English anytime she wants and she should take advantage of the fact that she´s in Perú by speaking Spanish. Then she usually speaks to me for about 15 minutes in Spanish and then goes back to her comfort zone. I wonder what she´s going to do after I leave (she´s here for another month after that) and she doesn´t have anyone with whom to speak in English!

After we ate dinner, the family left to go to Hermelinda´s and Edgar´s son´s house, so Jackie and I went on a mini-excursion to find chocolate (there is no really good dark chocolate in Cusco which is probably the single most unfortunate thing about this city). We ended up stumbling in to this café/bakery on Avenida de la Cultura (the main drag by our house) and one of the guys working let us sample some free chocolate. Then I bought chocolate chip cookies! I haven´t had the opportunity to bake since I´ve been here, although I think one of these days Ashley, Danielle and I are going to bake cookies with the boys. But those cookies were such a nice reminder of home.

This morning at the boys´hogar was pretty unpleasant. First, I got there and all the teachers had me draw the entire human from the front and back to show all of the muscles. This is something I would spend hours on in the States if I were doing it for figure drawing because the human body is so detailed. And they wanted me to do it for multiple boys in an hour. Super. Usually when the teachers ask me to something like that, the boy whose homework I´m doing is nowhere to be found. I absolutely hate drawing for the boys because the teachers guilt me into doing it, plus it doesn´t help them learn in any way especially if they´re not even around.

Then, Ashley, Danielle and I had arranged to have a field day, so we had planned a three-legged race, an egg-spoon race, a sack race etc. Typical "field day" activities. Well, there´s a new woman who works there who is really terrible and mean and told us we couldn´t ever have a game day (even though we´ve had them before and it hasn´t been a problem) because all the boys were behaving poorly etc. Which, granted they were a little bit insane today but nothing bad. Just energetic. She was really stressing me out because she kept yelling at random boys and I had no idea why. As if there were a shortage of unpleasant woman at that place...

Anyway, I talked to the director and she told me that it would be wonderful if we had a field day tomorrow, so after we told the boys that we had rescheduled the festivities, they mellowed out a little. But whenever the aforementioned witch lady was not around, all the boys started talking about how much they dislike her. I just feel so bad that all of these women and men come to this place who don´t even get along well with children. And it´s not like I can prevent them from working there. All I have the power to do is treat the kids like the wonderful people that they are to at least let them know that they are cared for and loved.

After that, I was walking to meet up with one of my friends for lunch and I ran into one of the guys who works with the boys in the afternoon. We got to talking and I asked him if Floy had mentioned anything about what happened on Saturday night. He said, "Oh yeah, about the people in the restaurant?" I had no clue what he was talking about, so he told me that apparently Floy said that when he went to the bathroom, some of the waiters asked him where he was from (probably because he was out with three gringas). He said he lived in an hogar on Avenida Grau and apparently they responded by telling him that was probably because his parents didn´t love him etc. Floy is really close to Alex (the guy I was talking to) and so it seems like he would tell him the truth. It would make sense that that´s what affected him so badly because he went to the bathroom right before we left the restaurant. Alex told me that Floy said he had a great time with the three of us and it was only at that point that he felt bad. I just don´t understand exactly why he didn´t say anything to us about it because he knows that we think we did something wrong. I´m sure he´s ashamed and embarrassed to say anything, but I don´t know why he´s still acting a little bit distant. I hope that by the end of the week he´s back to his usual self with us. I obviously don´t expect him to tell us what happened and there´s no way I can indicate to him what Alex told me. So that just complicates an already unpleasant situation.

Afterwards I went to my Spanish class and we read a bit of Cien Años de Soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude). This only served to remind me of the fact that it´s been a year since Profe. Alpert gave me a copy of that book and I haven´t even touched it. It´s just so large and daunting. I´m sure if I read it in English it wouldn´t be all that difficult, but I would really like to give it a shot in Spanish first. We´ll see how that works out for me...

Tonight some bricheros invited me and Jackie to go out, but we´re not going to go (obviously). Tomorrow Sarah gets back to Cusco so I´m going out to lunch with her, Ashley and Danielle. I´m excited to hear about all she´s done in Bolivia this past week.

Hasta la próxima vez,
Adrien