DON’T TALK TO STRANGE CREEPY MEN!

So, last week Friday was Halloween. Halloween is not a widely celebrated holiday here, but at school, since there are so many kids that have lived in the States, and then American teachers, they decided to make it be a “Rainbow Day”, meaning the kids didn’t have to wear uniforms, but were encouraged to wear orange, black, or purple. The seniors had a haunted house in their classroom, which, conveniently for them, meant no class. So, I spent the morning helping them decorate their haunted house, and then the rest of the morning being in charge of the lights for them in the haunted house. For the materials they had, they did an excellent job! Seeing some of my big tough ninth grade boys scream and hug their friends in it was probably the highlight of the day. It was very funny. You can check out pictures of Halloween at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2008578&l=7968a&id=88400178.

That night, we decided to have a Halloween party at our apartment. Danielle, Lauren, and I went to the colmado (a little grocery store) that has a live-in cat to get some snacks for our party. As we were walking there, it was a really rough “hit on the Americans” kind of night. Cars slowed down so they could look at us for longer, we got whistled at, a car full of about ten year old boys told us “We love you!”, you get the picture. When we stopped to buy empanadas at the corner a creeper there asked us where we lived, for our phone number, and if he could come home with us. Even in the colmado, we got hit on by the workers, who see us like twice a week, so you’d think they’d be used to the fact that we are young and white. Anyways, we were royally annoyed by the time we started home. Walking down our dark street, someone drove up one what sounded like a motorcycle very slowly behind us, and we were like, great! So, we decided to ignore the guy even though he was like “Excuse me! Excuse me!” We were annoyed and totally ignored the guy. He kept going though, “Excuse me, excuse me, please! Excuse me!” And we kept ignoring him, refusing to even look at him. “Please, can you tell me where Jose lives?” That’d be like driving down a street in the United States that had a bunch of apartment buildings and asking someone, do you know where John lives? So, we keep ignoring. And he asks again, “Please, please, can you tell me where Jose lives?” And he sounded so pitiful, I finally gave in and turned and looked. The guy was on a four-wheeler and immediately flashed me his adorable smile and said, “Hey Miss! How are you?” And I just started laughing and was like “Good, you?” And Danielle was like, “WAIT! YOU DON’T KNOW THIS GUY! DON’T TALK TO STRANGE CREEPY MEN!” Well, we actually had lucked out… It wasn’t a strange creepy man. It was George, one of my ninth graders, looking for Jose (one of my tenth graders) who lives by us and was having people over for his birthday. How crazy is that! Then a little later, we saw another one of my tenth graders in a car with his mom going to the same place. Crazy! Anyways, we got home, dressed up, and had a pretty fun Halloween party!

This week has been a little rough at school. I think I’ve had to deal with more cheating this week than any other since I’ve been here. Four of my ninth graders had cheated on a biology lab, so I pulled them out of class, talked to them about it, gave them a 0 on the assignment, and made them call their parents to tell them that they had cheated. Two, almost three, of them started crying when they were talking to their parents. Hopefully they learn a lesson. I’ve also caught three others cheating for other teacher’s classes this week. It’s so frustrating. If any of you have any great, no cheating, ideas, let me know! In ninth grade on Monday, I also almost had a fight break out. I was talking to the girls, and all of the sudden, Juan calls my name. I turn around to see him and Sebastian shoving Jose, and I was like, what an idiot, if you are going to start a fight, getting your teacher attention before it is probably the smartest thing to do. Then, I realized that Rony had Oasting from behind in basically a wrestling hold, but somehow he had Oasting’s arms pinned to his sides. Yang Gi and Frankie were standing between Oasting and Rony and the other group yelling. Apparently, what had happened, was that Oasting had gotten mad at Jose (over what, I’m still not sure) and was ready to take a swing at him, when my other boys broke it up. Kind of ironic considering like a two weeks ago, Marcel and Juan had told me, “Teeeeacher! You are VERY small. If there is ever a fight, we would break it up for you because you are so small.” So, I guess Juan followed through. (Marcel was home sick with pink eye, so he couldn’t be the hero.) School is definitely never, ever dull!

Today, I’m not teaching because I either 1. have conjuctuvicus (aka: pink eye) or 2. had another allergic reaction to whatever the heck I’m allergic to here. So, I’m hanging out at home and taking it easy. Hope all is well at home! I miss everyone! Let me know what you are all up to!