Sweet freedom

Here´s what happened at the daycare Monday: the new volunteer (Caroline) and I were getting ready to leave when Elsa and Claudia dropped the bomb that oh, by the way, the kids will be on vacation for the next week. So we don´t have to go to work, but if we do we´ll be helping them clean and organize until the kids come back next Tuesday. I think in metaphorical terms, we could call that the "final straw". I made an appointment to talk to Henry, the director of the Spanish school here, about the whole situation. When we met last night, I tried very hard to explain that we weren´t angry with the situation, just slightly unsatisfied and maybe a little frustrated. I say "tried very hard" because I think he still felt really bad about the whole thing, although he was very helpful. Weirdly, we ended up speaking in English, but since I´d been planning all day what I wanted to say in Spanish the conversation came out way more broken and awkward than I intended or expected. Anyhow, it turns out there was a huge lack of communication with the nuns, especially since the head Mother moved to Honduras 4 weeks ago without alerting the Spanish school. So, starting tomorrow, Caroline and I will be going to a different neighborhood to hopefully do English lessons/just hang out with a few teenage girls. Unfortunately, a lot of these girls will be gone on vacation as well, but I have high hopes all the same.

Part of me can´t help feeling really bratty and selfish about wanting to change all this. The daycare clearly does need help since they usually have 2 employees wrangling up to 65 kids. At the same time, though, I know that my strengths lie in working with older kids and definitely not with the younger ones. I´ve also been feeling progressively sadder and more repressed and today I realized that I feel freer than I´ve felt in weeks. Maybe I should have spoken up sooner, but the time never seemed quite right. It´s unfortunate that the situation is just now changing when I only have 7 work days left, but it´s better late than never.

In an unrelated story, there are 3 teenage boys who really like dressing in full drag and wandering the streets of Granada. I´ve seen them a couple of times now and I love watching them interact with the other locals, who have no problem letting the "ladies" know exactly what they think of their lifestyle. More power to them.