{"id":2206,"date":"2009-08-19T20:47:06","date_gmt":"2009-08-20T02:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.JFanjoy.com\/blog\/?p=2206"},"modified":"2009-08-19T20:47:06","modified_gmt":"2009-08-20T02:47:06","slug":"spontaneous-teaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/spontaneous-teaching\/","title":{"rendered":"Spontaneous Teaching"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tourSM.jpg\"<\/a>Things are not fantastic right now. We’re demoralized, and we’ve hit a sortof low point in our service so far. Emily’s post<\/a> is just part of what’s going on, as well as stuff too complicated (and boring?) to explain, and maybe a touch of homesickness. But despite this, some great things still spontaneously come up.<\/p>\n

I was weeding the greenhouse this morning, and I heard a commotion outside. Who should appear, but a dozen girls on recess from school (which is across the street). The greenhouse is the subject of much conjecture and wild speculation all over town, and I think that the schoolkids that have enough guts to go see it in person get some sort of bragging rights amongst their classmates. Anyways, they asked for a tour, so I let them inside and showed them around.<\/p>\n

“Are there any cucumbers?” one of the older ones asked. This is a loaded question; word got around that there are ALWAYS cucumbers, because they are my most successful plant and I am buried in them. What she really wanted to know was, “Can I have<\/strong><\/em> a cucumber?”<\/p>\n

Well, I give them out all the time and the kids know it, but I couldn’t do it this time because I didn’t have a dozen of them on hand to give to everyone. “Um, then, can you show us how to prepare them?” she asked, undaunted.<\/p>\n

So, we headed up to the house with a few fresh cucumbers. Fixing them up is easy; my dad’s been doing it for as long as I can remember. You just slice ’em thin, put them in a bowl with water and vinegar, and sprinkle salt and pepper on top. Vinegar is really rare here, so Emily and I substitute lime juice. It’s suprisingly yummy that way, too (Dad, take note).<\/p>\n

“Anyone who wants to come into the house has to take off their shoes,” I instructed, since it’s the rainy season and mud is eveywhere. In a flash, there were over 20 teeny-tiny shoes in a pile outside our door. NO ONE wanted to miss a chance to be in the Gringo House. I gave them a quick cooking class, leaving the skin on the cucumbers because that is where you get the few vitamins that cucumbers provide.<\/p>\n

“What is going on here?” Emily said, looking at the mountain of shoes as she walked by the house with an armload of laundry. Then she saw I was cooking for kids, and laughed.<\/p>\n

As the kids were sampling the cucumbers I’d prepared, I asked them if they knew why it’s important to always boil the water before putting it on the cucumbers. Or before drinking it, for that matter. I got a bunch of blank looks. Aaah, that is part of why we’re here, folks.<\/p>\n

Just then, Luki came by to sell us some tortillas. “Luki! How nice of you to drop by!” I said. “Do YOU know why it’s a good idea to boil drinking water?” Luki comes to the health lectures all the time, so I already knew she knew the answer. She looked a little hesitant about being put on the spot, but figured out what I was doing and played along.<\/p>\n

“To kill the bichos<\/em> (little beasts) that make us sick,” she said. Good job Luki! Yep, if you boil the water, you kill germs, microbes, parasites, etc. I reiterated all of that to the girls, then gave Luki the remaining cucumber as a prize for knowing the correct answer.<\/p>\n

And that, folks, is what Peace Corps is supposed to be like.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Things are not fantastic right now. We’re demoralized, and we’ve hit a sortof low point in our service so far. Emily’s post is just part of what’s going on, as well as stuff too complicated (and boring?) to explain, and maybe a touch of homesickness. But despite this, some great things still spontaneously come up. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jims-guatemala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}