moving along

Hey everybody, I hope life is treating you well in the states!
I´m doing pretty well. The recyclying project is painfully slow. Old habits die hard, right? At the very least I get to recycle, which makes me happy.
The big news is the success of my exercise class. "WHAT?!" you say. First I picked up jump rope last summer as a way to exercise on my own, in my house, without stares and catcalling. Then when I was at home I found these yoga/pilates/kickboxing/aerobics videos in the $1 section at Target, so I brought a few back. For a while the women in my community have been asking me how I shed some weight because obesity, and diet related diseases, are a huge problem here, particularly among the women. So I´ve been tossing around the idea for a while of giving classes, but I wasn´t sure how it would go over. I called a meeting of all the women, and they were so tickled! I have a small turn out, but a few regulars who really like it. So now I have exercise buddies, and I enjoy this project so much more than working in the school.
Ugh, the school. The principal´s such a creep, and the teachers are almost entirely unmotivated. The students and I get a long, but I work mostly with middle school aged students, so they like me individually, but they never want to participate in a group class. On top of universal pre-teen issues, they are SO incredibly shy. They sit in class copying from the board, never being asked to participate, and they literally freak out when I ask them to speak. That school is such a mess on every level. It´s heart-breaking.
What else? I participate in this theater/skit group when I get the chance. It´s a group of volunteers who travel and perform, and the kids love it because it´s goofy and it means a group of weird white people invade their community briefly. It´s also something they would never do themselves because they´re way too shy, so I think they appreciate that we have no shame.
Lastly, we celebrated Mother´s Day this month, which is a huge deal here. I´ll try to put some photos up soon.
Love y'all!