well, we had a crazy time getting here. One of the most harrowing travelling experiences of my life, due to all kinds of problems getting Peppy here - not the least of which being that we transferred planes in Mexico City, while he and our bags did not. We had to wait for ten hours at JFK while he caught up with us. Then the guy who was driving us from the airport to camp got lost and we took a 2.5 hour detour. I’m on about 2 hours sleep and sorting W2 forms into alphabetical order, but I don’t care about much except that we all made it here together. Peppy is - both remarkably and yet characteristically - peppy as ever. He loves the woodland environment we are living in and I’ve never felt him pull so hard on the leash as he does for the squirrels around here.
leaving Zamora did not happen in real time in my brain, I’m not sure I really know I’ve left.no. definitely not.
by the way, I’m in Stroudsburg Pennsylvania.
it takes a karate choppy kind of feeling to sit down and write here again. I just keep feeling so silly about it! busy month. I’ve basically been quite stressed and working really hard on changing the way I respond to feeling stressed. I feel like I made some progress, which is probably connected to where I am and who I look in the eye each day. I’m thinking abut the potato lady. Most days after work, I go and see the potato lady (am i spelling it right? if i say spud the brits will understand but the rest of you won’t.) hang on, I’ll go and check. ok. good. no ‘e’. Back to the point.
The potato lady cuts up the potato, puts it on a very big cracker-like thing and covers it with salt, lime, and multiple firey salsas. We talk (in Spanish. Yay helen). She smiles. Aaaaallll the time. I cannot really tell you about her, but i can tell you that she’s the virgin Mary that I would wear around my neck. Does that make sense? She’s my Mexican inspiration. She’s a mother of….lots. She’s a grandma of…. even more. She is a hard worker and she is totally positive and she treats everybody with this… this SMILE. This love and laughter and joyfulness. Like Mari, the wonderful mother of four who works and works and works for the school where we teach, who cannot afford to feed her children enough food, while we teachers work a few hours a day and earn so much more than her. She is doing her best to teach her children the values that will stop them from growing up into the kind of man their father was. She is one year younger than keith, and she is amazing. I know that it doesn’t help us to enjoy our spinach to hear about the children in Ethiopa, and it doesn’t stop me from worrying about my own problems to see the incredible hardship and fears of some of the people I have met here, but it makes me stop… and think… a lot.
anyway off to Pensylvania next week with keith and peppy to work a summer job at the camp where keith went to as a child and worked at as an adult. after much to-ing and fro-ing, I’m going to wait til next year to apply to Central. Never manage to get through a blog without the doorbell ringing…hasta pronto.
