Tis The Season

Oh the joys of the Christmas season! This week I learned that if you give disabled children lots of candy, fruit bread, and juice, they go insane just like typical kids! After an especially long and happy pre-Christmas junk food eating party, the kids went a little cuckoo. During lunch one decided that it was a perfectly acceptable lunchtime affair to roll his wheelchair over to me and pound on my back for a half-hour. While it was strange, he isn't very big so it felt a little like a miniature shiatsu massage, so I let him just keep at it. Today was yet another pre-Christmas party at the clinic, which involved dressing the kids up in ties and slacks or foamy pink princess dresses, and letting them sit around in their wheelchairs for 2 hours while the adults got their act together. Once the party commenced, we had a creepy grown woman dressed as a child's doll wearing underwear and a poofy top, big glasses, fake freckles, and blackened teeth - singing. Badly. For a long time. A really long time.

Lots of interesting things have happened this week. We had an entire city blackout one night as some friends and I were walking downtown. Some people freaked out, some kids tried stealing stuff and were hauled away by the police, and going against my adventurous spirit, I suggested getting a taxi and heading back home until the lights came on. As soon as we got home, the lights came back on, and we headed back to town.

One morning as I went to catch my usual $2 soles taxi, the taxi tried to tell me it was much more than that because the clinic was far. I argued that it wasn't far and that it is always $2 soles, and that he only trying to take advantage of me because I was a gringa. He angrily shouted, 'You have money and it is far!' I said fine, slammed the door shut, and the taxi waiting behind him charged $2 soles.

All my friends have gone home for the holidays, so I have been spending time with a local character. Carlos is my 21 year-old, emotionally sensitive (meaning, generally emotionally distraught), poet, musician, and romantic. He has been studying English so he comes over and we study together. The other day he claimed he had difficult homework and asked to come over. Once he arrived, he lamented for 2 hours that he met a girl in a bar from the States and only saw her twice but was in love, this was the girl of his dreams, and because they both had things in common (such as they both wear glasses and they both like the rain...), it was obviously meant to be, and now she was leaving. And he was in full mourning. Ahhh to discuss the things of love with young people, and in a foreign language nonetheless. Fortunately for my sanity, this Dreamgirl has sent him a happy email this week so Carlos is faring much better.

Things at the house are, as always, dramatic. Our youngest and most troublesome roommate, Gabriel, accidently left the gas on on the stove, and when another roommate lit the burner he was enveloped in flames! Fortunately he didn't catch fire, it was just a burst of flame that quickly went out. Supposedly one of our administrators is having a meeting with Gabriel today. Gabriel was also the one who left the water on last week and flooded the house. And the one who left the backdoor open during a rainstorm and flooded the living room.

Tomorrow I am helping out with a Christmas party in a town about an hour away. They call it a Chocolatada - we provide hot cocoa, treats, and gifts for the poor kids in town. Right now it's time to go to the local outdoor market to buy groceries, and then go work with my teen girls.