Friendly 8s, dog training and I don't know what else

So this weekend on Friday we did the Quaker version of Small Group Ministry. It was pretty similar to what I did out in Olympia, with the addition of dinner beforehand. Now, I love a good dinner, potluck and all, but when you add up dinner plus an hour and a half of talking, it can be pretty long. We did end earlier than we thought we would and then because of the group we had at the house, we pulled out all of the instruments and had a little folky jam. It was good to be playing with people who play well and excellent to have a chance to sing with them finally. Hard to believe it took almost two months to have our first real session and it was only an afterthought. (Well, it was a pre-thought for me, which is why Heather brought her fiddle, but an afterthought for everyone else). The queeries we were adressing were all about forgiveness and I found myself thinking a lot about my mom's group more to life and their clearing process. It was interesting to be involved in the conversation, but I definitely found myself distracted by the dogs (the neighbor's was over) and not really wanting to engage. A little weird for me because when I did SGM in Oly, I was in a very different place and the very calm dog at that house only centered me while I engaged on at least three different levels with the questions we were addressing. Even though I was only part of that group for a few months (4-5) I felt very connected with each of the people and felt like I knew them better than I knew some of my other relatively new friends even though I only saw them once a month. Then again, at this point I've forgotten all of their names and wouldn't have a clue about where they are now.
We've been helping to take care of a neighbor's dog while she's in the states. Her 7th grade son is still here, but he's not staying at the house. He's supposedly coming by the house to hang out with Crystal and feed her dinner. She's got some issues with her training, so jor's been on re-teaching her how to sit and behave properly. We've made some good progress, but more and more it seems like she really needs owners who assert themselves as the pack leaders which is hard with a german shepherd big enough to pull both of the people to the ground. Also, she doesn't quite know how to play with Toast yet, so there's been a lot of socializing.
I guess the only other thing I have to add at this point is that the other teacher who teaches 5-8th english and social studies and I have undertaken a massive task. We are visiting all of the homes of our 28 5-8th graders. The only bonus is that we have one pair of twins and one pair of cousins who live in the same house which brings our total down to 26 visits. This weekend we were supposed to do 4 in one part of the area called Cerro Plano, but there was a death of a grandfather that reduced our number by 2 and then one person who couldn't see us until quite late in the afternoon when we had hoped to only go to that part of town once in one day. That meant we only went to one house. While this was good for having the rest of the day to do things, it also meant that we couldn't easily leave when things were getting uncomfortable with the dad being a skeezeball in front of his wife. No one will be surprised to hear that he wasn't hitting on me, I'm sure, but I was pretty uncomfortable none the less with all of his comments aimed at my friend. No, we're not going to eat turtle eggs when we go to Tortuguero this October (though he didn't specifically say they were thought to be an aphrodisiac, he just kept saying we should try them) and no we won't be calling you anytime because your kid's causing trouble because frankly she's much better behaved than you are and no we won't be taking you up on the offer to give us rides all around Costa Rica while your wife stays home to work really hard and care for your children, one of whom has Down Syndrome. Nonononono. At least we've got that one over with. Most of the Tico men here have been very much not involved in the conversations that we've been having at their homes so it was very weird to be trying to translate all that he was saying and insinuating. Oh well. One incidence of overt racism and one of skeezy behavior out of 13 visits isn't that bad, right?
I was involved in this conversation with a couple of other US citizens from school about racism here and whether or not the cultural acceptability of making fun and being derragatory towards Nicaraguans can be related to the racism that happens with white folks in other places. It's something I'm thinking a lot about, especially since we just went and saw an excellent performance called El Nica by Nicaraguan born and Costa Rican raised César Meléndez. We got to take the 7-12th graders to a free performance. I was blown away by César Meléndez's physical acting, perhaps because when I don't totally understand the context, a monologue is difficult for me to understand. He clearly painted so many different pictures throughout the performance of immigrating to CR in order to find work, loosing his child as he was crossing a river, being beaten and finally wrapping the Nicaraguan and Costa Rican flags together around his neck in a clear image of forging ahead despite all of the difficulties he was facing. He's been working on this play for the past 11 years, performing it for the past 8 all over the world and I was thoroughly blown away by everything that he did. I can only imagine the impact if I had understood more of his words. But I was thinking a bunch about the different ways you can approach such a performance as a teenager. The kids from the Santa Elena public school were not overtly laughing at the difficulties El Nica was facing, but there were times when the character was clearly experiencing badness, and there were smiles on some of the boys' faces that seemed like held in laughter. I was unable to watch the faces of the kids from our school, or from the other private school due to my location at the back of the theater, but I can only hope that it wasn't as prevalent throughout the audience as it was in the group of 5-6 boys that I could see. I just don't know. I guess this is just a ramble and I'll be done for tonight.
We've been getting mail lately and I swear we're going to figure out how to send some back soon. The post office isn't exactly in a convenient location and most folks send their stuff with other folks going to the states.
Lastly, if you're around on Sundays, we're generally (though not today) on Skype around 2pm est (until y'all start saving daylight at which point it changes, but I don't recall which direction).