Lesson 1: Simple appreciation

The other day we read Buenas Noches, Luna (Good Night, Moon), and Ariela found in the illustrations every object that the narrative describes. I was impressed.

As I close the door of the biblioteca every day, it is as though I am closing the door on some chaotic mess; I close that door with a feeling relief and release. However, the time it takes me to walk from the library through the farm to my casita is long enough for me to reconnect with the good moments I share each day with my alumnos, my students. I shouldn't really call them students, even, becaues they are more like companions. These are the children who drop by the library, most of them on a regular basis, and denign to put up with my attempts to direct their play. The library is fairly well-endowed with supplies and is a great refuge for these kids. While I'm working with an individual, which so far seems to be the most fruitful method of instruction, the rest of the children don't hesitate to take out whatever they most want to play with -- bats, balls, Play-Dough, Uno cards, paper and crayons. They enjoy drawing flowers and houses, mostly two story ones divided into four rooms. Very few houses here have two stories, but a lot of the houses in our books do. The library quickly becomes a mess of scattered books and papers, crayons wherever you look, flying chalk dust-infused air, and children's shouts: "Tu! Ve!" The floor is instantly littered with remnants of art projects. I'm determined to take on garbage as my personal crusade. I'd like to impress upon my friends here the importance of not throwing trash, no matter how insignificant, into the roadway. So far, however, it's a rarity for even a child at the biblioteca to feel accountable to me for anything. Respect is, to a degree, a foreign concept in Los Marranitos.

My stomach is not showing much respect for my wishes, either, and I'm feeling a little traveler's sickness. It's pouring buckets and I've sat down to a cafecito back at the Finca. Lupe has gone for the evening and left my dinner waiting on the table; Pablo's out as well, so I'm left to contemplate the status of my stomachache and with the past week's successes. I also think about how I can be so frustrated, as I am, by something, my time at the school, that serves such a good purpose. I know that I have a lot to learn from this place and from myself before I will be a true, strong, educational resource for these apparently self-confident children. In the meantime, I'll keep reminding myself of the most simple things -- as those are what really matter.

Without me, Ariela would not have paused to find both clocks in the great green room of Good Night Moon. Had interested parties from the rural United States not supplied the library with paper, Franyi couldn't have cut it up into showflake-like patterns -- the waste of which we collected in the trash box. And, most importantly, if the Biblioteca Alta Gracia were not perched, in all it's pink and green glory, on the edge of this Dominican mountain, these children wouldn't so far surpass their parents in reading and writing skills, and countless stories would remain unread -- and untold.