12/09/11

Today I pulled all of my REDES girls out of class to talk to them about the t-shirt situation (with the school director’s permission, of course). They were all appalled by how many shirts were taken, but unfortunately weren’t able to give me any concrete information. None of them said that any of them took any, thus so far it looks like only girls from Ann and Erin’s groups took shirts. I believe them when they say they don’t know anyone else who took shirts. This isn’t to say that my group is simply made up of better people, but we have been a group much longer so they have a lot more at stake in the group and know me better. More importantly, they are a very tight-knit group and know each other too well for someone to have taken shirts without anyone else knowing.
We caught the little twat who stole my capulana on Saturday (Ann and I had brought a bunch of capulanas for the girls to sit on in a couple of the stations. Apparently one girl had taken the liberty to tied it around her waist, I saw her at one point and wondered why she was wearing my capulana. But I was too busy to do anything about it. Then she left wearing it). Luckily we had a video with her in it, wearing it, so Ann and I showed the video to our REDES girls and they were able to identify her by name. The stealing of t-shirts of inexcusable, but I can understand why they did that. But why in the world would a girl steal a capulana? That is one of the only things that people here have plenty of, and mine wasn’t even a new or particularly nice one. Again, she didn’t think she had stolen it, but only finally admitted it when Ann told her she wasn’t leaving until she heard her admit she had stolen the capulana.
My English lessons with the little girls from the orphanage feature one brilliant little girl who looks forward to the lessons and asks me every day if we will have one, and five of them who run away and do their best to be scarce during these times. But the one girl’s retention rate is impressive and it makes working with her incredibly fulfilling. Right now she is standing on my porch yelling “good afternoon!” to everyone who passes and occasionally runs in to knock on my door to ask how to say something in English
On Friday Anna, Naomi and I ran 18 miles. It’s a pretty incredible feeling.