Rhianna Banana

Soy Rebelde!

I wonder how many times I can use song names to title my blog entries. That will probably get old in about a month. This is a picture of some of my students. I am now teaching 73 kids! It´s going to take me awhile to learn all their names.
After class yesterday, I went with a couple of my students and their family to their farm because they wanted to use my camera to take pictures of their ornamental plants. Not sure why, maybe to help market the plants? I can´t take credit for most of the pictures, I let the family take pictures while I walked around with the mom and kids, eating passionfruit and papaya fresh from their trees. Yum! The 15-year-old son, Mentor, also wanted to take pictures of some of the animals on his farm. I thought this pig was pretty cute =)
This is a guantoso, or something like that. I don´t know what the word is in English. Very cute and friendly.
This is Jessenia, one of my students, holding a funny looking duck. It looks like it might be some sort of weird duck-chicken hybrid.











I don´t know the names of any of these flowers, so I won´t even try to label them! But they are very pretty!

More of my students. Eventually I will know all of their names! I am really enjoying teaching. I am now teaching English in the elementary school 4 times a week, for an hour in the morning. Monday is the jardin, which is for the pre-kindergarteners and kindergartners. The kidos call me Señorita Ariana, and occasionally Señor. The kids in the jardin can´t read or write, don´t know the Spanish alphabet, and apparently can´t tell if I am a man or a woman =) I feel like I´m mostly babysitting them, and they are not going to learn that much, so I mostly just give them coloring books and try to teach them colors. Wednesday is the second graders, and they´re a little bit better than the jardin kids. I like working with the bigger kids more. Thursday is the 3rd and 4th graders, and Friday is the 5th, 6th, and 7th graders. I´ve learned the kids will behave and do just about anything I ask if I give them stickers.

Sometimes when my friends and I are walking around Santo Domingo and other towns, people will see us and yell out whatever words they know in English; "Hey man! Where are you from?" or "I love" and "Beautiful". Perhaps I should not be teaching the kids English, and contributing to this annoying way of hailing gringos. But my plan is to teach the kids really obscure words, like u is for umbrellabird, v is for velociraptor, and x is for xenops and xiaosaurus. That way, when my students see gringos, they can yell out "Velociraptor!" But maybe that would scare gringos who are familiar with Jurassic Park.

I think I am going to be a champion bike rider by the time I am done with my Peace Corps service. To get to La Asuncion from Valle Hermoso, I have to take a bus to the entrance to La Asuncion, and then bike for 30 minutes to La Asuncion. The 5km dirt road is very hilly and rocky. The hazards of this commute include scary dogs (the previous volunteer at my site was bitten by a dog), snakes, the usual heckling and harassment and bicycle malfunctions. I have figured out how to deal with the dogs, so they don´t scare me as much now. I figure I could also use my bike helmet as a weapon. There have been sightings of coral snakes on that road, but I have my snake bike kit, and I try to look out for any snakes. Occasionally trucks or buses with workers pass by me, and it seems like there is some unwritten rule that whenever there are 3 or more young men together, they have to harass any woman they see. When I am riding my bike, I usually have both pant legs rolled up and I´m wearing my glasses and a dorky red bike helmet (like Andy in the 40-year-old virgin). So there´s really nothing sexy there, but I still get catcalls. Whatever, that doesn´t bother me as much anymore.

I´ve only had one major bicycle malfunction, when my seat fell off while I was biking. I was heading fast down a hill when I heard a loud metallic crack. I yelled "Holy shit!" and then tumbled off my bike. It´s always funny to see what words one uses in crisis situations like that. I like to think that I said "Holy shit" because of the Wilco song "Company in my back", not because I am lame and couldn´t think of any better expletive. Luckily the only witnesses were some cattle, and I only scratched up my arm a little. It was actually pretty darn funny. I picked myself up, put my seat in my backpack, and then I had to walk all the way back home with the broken bike. On my way into town, I had passed the usual motorcycle taxi drivers who hang around the gas station. Then I had to pass them again on my way out. They asked me what had happened, and I told them, and they thought the whole thing was hilarious. I was told during training that one of the other major goals of Peace Corp volunteers is to entertain the locals. I think I am doing a pretty good job of that! When I told my friend Sonia´s dad about my bike accident, he said we should watch the news, to see if my spill made it on to that evening´s broadcast. My seat is fine now, and I´ve learned to go a little bit slower down the hills!

Now I should explain the title of this blog. Rebelde is a popular Mexican band that also has a novela (soap opera). I love Rebelde, and I am not ashamed to admit it. When I first got to my site, I watched the show every night with my friend Sonia. Rebelde is currently on a break right now, which is unfortunate, but I bought myself a Rebelde DVD to help with my withdrawal. I have a Peace Corps conference next month with everyone from my training group, and we are going to have a Battle of the Bands competition in the middle of the week. My friends and I are entering the contest as Rebelde, and so I´ve been practicing some dance moves with my friends Leonor and Lucy, who also did a Rebelde dance number some time last year. After class this week, we watched my Rebelde DVD and tried to learn the moves from their music videos. We practiced in Leonor and Lucy´s store, with two little girls, and other kids watching and mocking us from outside. But I think we are going to be fabulous, and hopefully I´ll be able to post lots of pictures of our awesome performance in a future post. Yes, this is what I am doing as a Peace Corps volunteer; giving kids stickers for learning colors and numbers in English and practicing pop band dance moves. It´s all about cultural exchange and promoting world peace =)

posted by Unknown @ Friday, September 15, 2006