Red Card=MP5

Hey I haven't blogged in a week but I will tell you what I know...

Every morning for the last 2 weeks I have been waking up at 7 AM to a gratefully cool 82 degrees, and enjoy my coffee. By 9 AM we're back up to 89 degrees or so. I have an air conditioner in my apartment and am loathe to shut it off when I start my day. At 8 AM I teach a small group of 4 sisters. We play word games, practice vocabulary, and work on pronunciation in the morning. Their ages range from 7-12 years old. One of their favorite games to play is big karuta. I hide flashcards around the Banegas compound, shout them out in English (one at a time) and the girls have to sprint around the yard looking for the right word. This activity usually tires them out enough so that they will sit through a quick grammar lesson. Even so, they are fountains of energy and are ready to leave by 10 AM, when classes end.

After that I usually eat breakfast, tough it varies. Today for breakfast I ate an omlette, some kind of fried bean/chile, crumbly white farmer's cheese (not my favorite) and some sort of fried banana/maduro/platano/verde. I am a pitiful judge of what kind but I know its served at every meal! By 11 AM I amsettled down into one of the five hammocks hanging from varying mango trees on the Banegas Compound. I usually prepare my lesson for the night class at this time, though I usually nod off for a bit during the midday sun. There is a breeze right now, but at a price: the majority of the roads in Tocoa are dirt and as such blow a lot of dust into the air. Sweeping is a regular chore.

1 PM is usually lunch time. I don't know what we will be having but maybe I will blog about it tomorrow. Banana!

My associate/hostess Diani has a 4 year old son named David. He is a precocious and energetic little boy that made friends with me the night I got here. David calls me Elik. He likes to show me everything, like food, tables, hammocks, locks and explain how they work. He also likes to ask questions and He invited me to his birthday party. Which happened on the 28th of May, haha. The goodwill was there though.

For the last two Sundays I have been hanging out with my host brother Orlin. I go with him and his friends don Vidal and Joel Caballero to Sava to watch the Division 3 soccer playoffs. His club, The Boca Juniors, were knocked out a couple weeks ago so Orlin was there merely as a fanatico of fútbol. This last Sunday was the championship, between Juventud of Sava and Trujillo, a coastal city an hour north of Tocoa. After 90 minutes Sava was up 1-0 and gameplay became continually more agressive. In the end, a Trujillo player unsuccessfully tackled a Juventud player from behind. They started fighting and the Trujillo player got the red card. So the T. player charged the Ref and started roughing him up. 2 cops came onto the field to subdue this guy. One of them had a pistol and the other held back, brandishing an MP5, making sure the teams nor the fans started getting too rowdy. I have never seen automatic weapons on the soccer field, so of course I thought it was awesome/hardcore/ messed up.