Hey Everyone,
Well, as usual life in Casa has been very eventful. Remember the woman who left in December? Well, the woman who took her place, and who has been with us for about 3 months, did not show up to work two Wednesdays ago. When the HR person called her to ask what was up, the woman informed HR that she had another job and would not be returning. WHAT???? Needless to say, the adults in the house were not too happy with this woman and we were all pretty worried about informing the kids, how we would do it, how they would react, and whether or not we would be able to hide our anger in presenting the information to the boys. After lots of whispering in the office and phone calls with program coordinators, we decided to have a community meeting late that night when almost all the boys would be home from school. The boys handled the news calmly and most of them, along with us, reported feeling confused or surprised. I feel like the information was presented in the most fair way possible. We explained that sometimes adults make decisions that affect other people, and sometimes we don't understand why they make them, or what they are thinking. Some of the boys were really insightful, one reporting that he felt like it was a desertion, but also saying that we are a family and will stick together. When he said this, a bunch of the other boys were like "yea that's right!" That was a pretty amazing experience, just because I feel more and more connected to the kids and the program each day and I know that everyone else feels connected as well. There are only 9 adults who work in the house, 2 weekend guys, 2 overnight guys, 4 women during the weekdays (including me and now only 3 of us since the girl left), and 1 supervisor. With this number of adults and 24 boys you tend to have no choice but to step up and be really active in what the boys are doing!
Aside from that event, things in the house have been really fun for the past two weeks because the kids are all on vacation from school. Every day we've been going out and having fun, flying kits, playing with the frisbee, playing soccer, etc. Last week during Semana Santa I had off Thursday and Friday and took a trip to a beach near Acapulco with two friends from ultimate. Semana Santa is a little crazy here in Mexico because EVERYONE goes to the beach. It's like spring break for Mexicans but the thing is that obviously since it's the week before easter, it seems like everybody in the country has vacation at the same time. Flights and hotels are all marked up and most places are booked solid. Luckily, my friend knew of a small beach north of Acapulco called Pie de la Cuesta. It's a small strip of beach with the ocean on one side and a lagoon on the other. It was surprisingly calm there and not too many people. We enjoyed our 4 days laying on the beach, throwing the disc, and drinking cerveza. We didn't put more than our feet in the water because it is so polluted that most of the time it's nice and foamy. Uggh. One night we decided to take a cab into Acapulco to go out. I can't even think what to compare it to. It was like NYC at Christmas or something, except everybody was wearing a lot less clothes:-) It was like a big carnaval with lots of people in the streets. Including families still roaming the streets at 4am when we left the bar. Que cosas aqui en Mexico!
I'm off to salsa class soon and then an outing to our favorite salsa bar - Casa de los Mojitos. My good friend Joyce heads back to Brazil in a week and a half so we are doing our best to make the most of her last few days in Mexico. Hope everyone is well! Oh - I want to make a shoutout to Dr. Linda Radbill, one of my most dedicated blog readers and also the creator of my blog:-) Congrats Dr. Linder!!
Oh - almost forgot to mention. The title of this blog comes from Kung Fu Panda, which due to another stomach infection I watched about 4 times in one weekend recently. Once in spanish with english subtitles, once in spanish with spanish subtitles, and once in english with spanish subtitles. Ok - that's only 3 times, the point is I watched it a lot. Master Oogway, the turtle, says there is no bad news, there is just news. Or something like that. Everyday we get some kind of news in the Casa, but we keep on keeping on:-)
