So I’m not here 5 days before I find myself in front of a
classroom full of 6-8 year old French children crawling around on the floor
pretending I’m a hyena. Blame the -11ºC weather outside, but damn did I have
fun. When the crap did kids get so
cool?! All my memories from that goofy little epoche was Hooked On Phonics
(Being fresh off the truck from Madagascar and unable to read English) and
colored tissue paper “stained glass windows”. We told stories, they asked me
questions about Hollywood and the Statue of Liberty, I read them Robin Hood,
and they went NUTS when I took out my video camera and caught all of their
hilarious (be it alarmingly death-filled) Robin Hood-based skits on film.
Seriously, cranky as some people I’ve met here are, the kids are freakin’
stellar. I’ll try and do video.
Strike that, I’ll do a video.
So in otherwise, when I’m not hanging out with little kids
(I hate how creepy that sounds) My mornings are spend hanging from scaffolding
from 8a.m. to lunchtime, after which I, being the gung-ho painfully American
direction-challenged 20 year old young lady I am, have the people I live with
drop me in the woods where I then proceed to Bear Grills myself back home while
listening to my favorite guilty pleasure podcasts (namely Crash Course In
Awesome) for the rest of the afternoon.
Tally ho!
It’s winter so all the bugs my imaginary “surviving” is
supposed to drive me to eat are all dead! Though if I make it through this
crazy year without eating one bug I might be a little underwhelmed.
You watch, that bug will be malaria.
Back to the scaffolding:
So being an unpaid and unskilled laborer means all I can do
is try my best. I will paint unevenly for a while. My girl arms, in all their
feminist might, will get tired quickly. All things that every so often the
less-kind-than-I’m-used-to dude I work with and for has trouble understanding.
Of course I imagine that it’s hair-pullingly frustrating to deal with someone
who needs as many pointers as I do, but a part of me feels that it is sort of
what he signed up for by accepting HelpXers (that’s what we call
ourselves. Cute huh?). There are, every so often, when I feel on the brink
of taking him aside and saying “Listen here Omlette Du Fromage, I’m trying my best
here. LAY OFF!” I crack a smile, turn up my iPod, and carry on.
The tension however, I’ve noted, in only the last two days has changed the way we approach one another. Headphones in, I work with the focus for a surgeon. Now instead of snatching the roller, he tells me what to do and leaves me the hell alone. I don’t know what I was looking for, but I found something waaaaaay different, and in it’s own gruff and frozen way, very cool. As a person not used to being treat like something not special (I’m very aware that I have lived a super lucky existence) I am learning a lot about how I react to that. As my friend Lydia said sunnily one day, “Every day’s a school day!”
We also eat dessert at every meal, a tradition I will keep forever.
The tension however, I’ve noted, in only the last two days has changed the way we approach one another. Headphones in, I work with the focus for a surgeon. Now instead of snatching the roller, he tells me what to do and leaves me the hell alone. I don’t know what I was looking for, but I found something waaaaaay different, and in it’s own gruff and frozen way, very cool. As a person not used to being treat like something not special (I’m very aware that I have lived a super lucky existence) I am learning a lot about how I react to that. As my friend Lydia said sunnily one day, “Every day’s a school day!”
We also eat dessert at every meal, a tradition I will keep forever.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire