dreaming of tetris

My computer died. I believe I mentioned that in my last entry, but I felt the need to emphasize this tragic event. The past week at site has been interesting to say the least. Without my computer I found myself searching for ways to keep myself entertained. I tried the age-old past time of reading, but this quickly got old. First of all, if I try to read outside it is usually too cold. If I do manage to sit outside for any extended period of time, people young and old gather around and hover over me, asking me what it says in Spanish. No one really reads here so I don’t know if they understand that it is pretty much impossible to read when someone is asking you questions every minute! Plus, I don’t have the vocabulary (and neither do they) to translate it! So that leaves reading to become a strictly indoor activity. However my room doesn’t have much light and when I turn the light on it is still not conducive to reading. I find that the shadow that my head casts over the pages is rather distracting. I am also way too lazy to get out of bed and turn off my light at night when I am finished reading.

Luckily, I remembered that I had my Nintendo DS buried somewhere in my room. This has been my saving grace for those early mornings when Jhoana wakes me up crying at 5am and I can’t go back to sleep. As well as in the evenings when it is too cold to go outside, there is nowhere to go, and everyone is asleep in my house anyways. I rediscovered Tetris and quickly mastered it in a couple of days. It was a lifesaver for the time I woke up at 1am and couldn’t fall back asleep until 5am. After I essentially beat the game by clearing over 200 lines, disappointment sank in because I wasn’t sure what else to do. Luckily there are a lot of different Tetris games to keep me somewhat occupied. However, I think I should lay off the Tetris because I started dreaming about Tetris every night and the theme song became stuck in my head.

When I wasn’t playing Tetris I was finally filling my days going to various classes. I (stupidly?) scheduled myself to have things to do every weekday. I am now teaching 3 computer classes in the colegio, 3 self-esteem workshops in the escuela, 4 classes of tutoria in the colegio, and at least 2 English classes, all with a teacher of course. I realized how much I would be traveling in the next few months and panic sank in so I quickly filled my schedule. I have that tendency to do all or nothing. Whether or not my recent increase in workload is related to the loss of my computer is up for debate.

I was bored of playing tetris so instead I gathered round and watched them kill and open an infected pig. That took up at least an hour of my time.

Communication activity with the 5th grade in the colegio.

Cuyes in the kitchen and the kitten trying to keep warm. Most people just let them roam around on the kitchen floor. Have you ever heard a guinea pig squeal? It's definitely something, especially when you have 30 of them doing it at the same time.

I was bombarded by all the kids in the escuela. They really love pictures. The little boy in yellow was in a hurry to see the picture.

Self-esteem workshops in the escuela.