Sunday, March 2, 2008

Will the real Jose please come forward

Will the real José Please Come Forward
Did I tell you that I have the most beautiful children in my classroom? I do, they must have gathered all the beautiful kids and put them all in my class. There are 19 of the little darlings but never the same 19 it seems; they like to change their names on me. Today I thought I was very clever and made them all name tags to hang around their necks and this seemed to work fine until the end of class José handed in his assignment with Antonio written on the top. I pointed to his name tags and asked what happened. He said he didn’t want to be José anymore he wanted to be Antonio again, like last week. Unbeknownst to me I had 2 José’s in my class but the 2 of them kept changing their names from José to Antonio making it so that I never noticed....clever little guys, and not so bright a teacher. I believe we have sorted it out today though. Mexican children normally have 4 names, a first name, a second name, then their mother’s maiden name and then their father’s name. My daughter’s names follow that sequence as well but we have never actually used all those names but these kids do use them all. I have asked them to choose one name and stick with it so that I have ½ a chance of remembering them....hence the name tags. Also hard to tell them all apart when they are all equally beautiful and sweet...noisy and very tricky, but sweet. Ever so sweet, I know I’m going to want to take them all home with me when I leave.
I did have an interesting bus ride out there today, and I was on the right bus this time. I had to make copies of my lessons for the kids today and the copy/internet place on the Island does not open until 1 pm (or at least it didn’t today) we Island people are quite the slackers. So when I got off the panga I walked downtown and got my copies made and caught the bus from there. At the very next stop 2 clowns got on the bus, yep, real clowns. Their make up was done so perfectly that they really looked like real clowns (like there are real clowns) they performed a little skit and were rather entertaining. After their little act they walked around and were collecting donations, I am not sure for what as I could understand nothing (I don’t speak clown) so I did not contribute. Shortly after they got off another gentleman got on with a guitar and preceded to serenade us all, he was rather good and he looked like he might have had a family to feed so I did contribute to his cause whatever that may be. It could very well have been his next hit of some drug or for tortillas, who knows, it is beyond my control and in Gods’ hands. I see so many hands out everyday that I cannot help; I don’t have enough pesos to go around. I can’t help but wonder what Jesus would have done when an empty hand would reach out to him as he passed by. It doesn’t tell us in Bible if he had a miracle for everyone that reached out, we don’t know how many miracles he actually performed....we know it’s many. Did he just look down and give a sympathetic smile and continue walking as I do, somehow I don’t think so.....but we know he didn’t have money to give. What did he do?

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