Last week, we went to a fiesta that was held for no reason we could determine. Our Nica friend who works in the preschool in the municipal dump admitted that the purpose of the costumes and balloons and music and piñata was "para destraerlos" (to distract them). Little kids in costumes are always good for a laugh, and considering that the participants of the costume fun live below the extreme poverty line in a trash dump, creativity and resourcefulness combined to make some really cute and funny pictures.See more here: http://flickr.com/photos/juliamariemills/sets/72157602220297723/
On Saturday night, we had a murder mystery party at the Manna house for our advanced English class and a few other Nica friends. Marcela was still on her visit home in the States, so the story was that we were on a cruise ship, and Marcela had been pushed overboard. Our students were charged with solving the mystery of her untimely death by questioning the characters present, which included:
The Merman in the cruise ship pool (Matt)
The Italian Supermodel (Tessa)
The Captain with a lisp (Dane)
The Lounge Singer (Erin)
The Castaway (our photographer-from-New-York visitor, Brian)
The International Beach Volleyball Champion (Geoff), and
The Narcoleptic Pirate (me)
We had a great time and after the mystery was solved and lots of great new vocabulary was learned (lounge singer, alibi, narcoleptic, etc.), we spent hours chatting in Spanglish over snacks and dancing to all kinds of world tunes, and by around 11 pm, nearly everyone ended up in the pool in their clothes. Even though lots of these people are in their twenties and in college, they still know how to act like kids and have a great time. Alan, one of our students, showed me and Geoff his scorpion tattoo and told us a Spanglish story about the time he almost died twice. One day, when he put on a pair of shorts, he felt a sharp pain followed by loss of feeling in his tongue and leg, which prompted his grandmother to ask if he had a scorpion in his shorts, to which he replied, "No, Granmother, I do not have one scorpion en mai charts." So she patted his leg to feel for foreign objects, and when she did, the scorpion stung him a second time. When he was finally taken to the hospital, his whole nervous system a mess, he was given an injection to which he had a severe allergic reaction. Obviously, he lived, but it was during this fiasco, Alan told us, through desperation and prayer, that he came to believe in Jesus sincerely, rather than superficially as he had before. To mark the significance of this event in his spiritual life, he got a tattoo on his left thigh where the scorpion stung him. He also got a tattoo on his right thigh of a heart with two pistols "because I like" and one on his ankle of an Aztec sun, Alan shrugs, smiles, and concedes "because I am crasy!" and jumps back into the pool, playfully taking an innocent bystander with him.
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