Back to school

The first week of school has come and gone. It was fun, much more fun than it was last year when I had absolutely no idea what was going on. The students, strangely, all acted like little angelitos, and the director was surprisingly pleasant to me. My first graders all now know to say “I am fine, thank you,” when asked, “How are you?” although if you ask them what it means in Spanish, they look at you with a blank stare. We’ll keep working on it.

Yesterday, I sat through a two-hour staff meeting. Staff meetings are never fun, but staff meetings in a different language are even more tortuous. The part I did enjoy, however, was the presentation of brooms. I’ve mentioned before how important brooms and sweeping are in this country, right? Well, each teacher got a new broom and a new dust pan yesterday, just to start the year out right. All of the brooms had turquoise broomsticks, and all but one had pink brooms. One had a blue broom. The janitor (also my host mom) had the honor (for obvious reasons) of handing out the brooms. Everyone was excited and began immediately to write their names on the broomsticks. But then someone noticed that Felix, the lone male teacher, had gotten a pink broom. How funny! A man with a pink broom! The director suggested he change with someone so as not to be stuck with the ever-feminine pink broom, but it was too late. He’d already written his name on it! But there’s a reason she is the director; she quickly solved the problem by unscrewing the broomstick and screwing it back onto a blue broom. Now Felix can keep his classroom floors clean and keep his manhood intact.

Along these same lines – the lines of floor-cleaning obsession – Andreina, the baby of the house, recently got her very first T-shirt mop. Remember when she got the little baby broom? Well, now she has a tot-sized mop made of her very own unwanted T-Shirts. That little Tica really is growing up.