Yesterday's blog entry missed several events I'd like to write down somewhere, so I decided to attach them here:- Alicia returned to Chicago last Sunday, after making her wedding arrangements here in Guatemala. During this time, she got baptized just so she could get married under the catholic church. (How unnecessary is that?)
- I missed my abacus class last week because I overslept (verschlafen), but I went today, and was happily promoted to the next level!! Yes! Kira offered me to pass to a level she calls "The Map" (because its exercise book has a map on its cover), and I heartily agreed. These exercises are considerably different from the ones in the past levels. Numbers are smaller, but instead of the usual 10 addition exercises, "The Map" has 15. And instead of allowing 10 minutes for each exercise, "The Map" allows for 6. Mental multiplication and division exercises were introduced, and mental addition is still around. This is going to be fun :). Accuracy-wise, I'm getting 80s and 90s (not bad), but I really need to get my times down, even if only using one hand.
- I had an appointment at the hospital last saturday to get my hand checked. I waited in a hallway about an hour and a half, after which a doctor (Dr. Sergio Morales, the one in charge of my surgery) removed my cast and cleaned my wounds, and I saw my naked hand after the operation for the first time. I wish I had taken a picture of it, but I'll say this: it was UGLY. I don't remember ever seeing such an ugly thing in my life (except in TV & computers). The skin on my hand was all brown, dirty-looking, wrinkled... it loooked like a sick old man's hand. Two lines of skin were sewn together with black thread, as if it were a leather belt or bag. And of course, most noticeable of all were the two gray nails that protruded from two dark red spots (showing coagulated blood) on my wrist and on the back of my palm. And looking at that ugly, ugly sight, it happened to me. It had never happened to me before. I got dizzy, felt the need to vomit, and had a fainting sensation (where vision goes white and body equilibrium fails). I didn't actually faint or vomit, but it was surprising to see what the simple sight of a seriously injured body part can do to you.
- I'm tutoring Andrea, my cousin Adrian's youngest daughter, on her Physics and Spanish classes. She's in 8th grade and attends Colegio Aleman, so most of her assignments are in german. She's 15 years old, and I had never ever before really spoken to her. Until two tuesdays ago, that is, when her mother called and asked me to help Andrea with her Physics classes. I went to her house (located deep, deep inside a mountainous residential area called "El Encinal"), and helped her do some exercises about mass, weight, and gravity (Masse, Gewicht, und Gewichtskraft). That was easy. The interesting part in this story is Andrea's personality. She can't stay quiet or still for long (or even for a short while). She's all laughs, funny, witty, and teases a lot. During the only two classes I've had with her, she's already nicknamed me "Little Nerd" and told me all kinds of stories about her friends and parties and boys that have crushes on her. Our weekly tutoring meetings are actually fun, and we'll be having one once a week, so that's good :).
I... guess that's most of it. I'm still earning about $5 a day grading essays, I just finished 2/5ths of my anti-"mushrooms" treatment (54 pills to go), and... oh yeah! Isabel won a full scholarship for a summer course in Yale University. Impressive, considering only about five scholarships are given to high schoolers in the whole country (the USA). She's having quite a successful academic life up north in Chicago. Good for her!
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