the children get dirtier and my spanish gets worse

Am, rather surprisingly, loving working with all the kids. They may be grubby but they are all exceptionally cute and incredibly affectionate. They have discovered that I am happy to throw them around and so I have them in fits of giggles as we pretend to be planes around the classroom. Its all good exercise. Finally getting a hang of the routine there, in terms of there doesnt appear to be any routine, but I manage to get at least 30mins or so of maths teaching or reading in, before the room descends into chaos. Basically it seems that nearly all the kids you see on the street aren´t homeless but their home lives are less than great and so the centre provides some kind of stability and care for them. Plus it seems to be where families can come to do washing and where a lot of the older kids come to eat and wash. I guess its a bit like a youth centre + extras and seems to be really well utilised. We dont have any funds though to use so we are also desperately trying to fund raise so we can go on little trips, especially as its the holidays at the moment. So far a couple of schools over here have given some money so we are taking a group of the older kids to a museum and the younger kids to the ranarium (apparently this is snakes and things, so might give that one a miss!). The director of the centre seems to want to take everyone on a 3 day trip to mindo in a few weeks and somehow thinks we are going to come up with $1000!!!!! We´ll try but somehow i think we might be lacking on that one! More entertaingly, we are also putting on a bit of a talent show in a couple of weeks and I have somehow been talked into taking part with one of the other volunteers......at the moment we are going to be tina turner unless I can do some quick thinking! So all in all, am rather glad I didn´t work at the womens centre, and am hoping that I can start making more of a contribution now that I have figured out how I can fit in, and now that the kids are starting to recognise me and talk with me.

And on a completely different note, am loving living in Quito. Luckily my friends here are equally enamoured with salsa so we are getting a fair bit of dancing in and yesterday we even went for private lessons! It was really good and feel like i understand a bit more about what I am meant to do, even if actually doing it is a tad more problematic! Definately going to go back for some more.....although I dont think I will ever be able to move my hips like they think I should. My teacher also tried to do some dip thing where he seemed to think I would be happy to be flung backwards whilst clutching him with one leg wrapped around him. Needless to say, after a couple of attempts at my clinging to him with v stiff arms, convinced he was going to drop me, he gave up on that particular move. Maybe that can be my challenge for a couple of weeks.

Anyway, us girls are all off to the Bodeguita de Cuba tonight which, I have been assured, is heaving on a Thursday with loads of dancing....hurrah....will try not to fall over and embarrass myself.

On a less positive note, my spanish appears to be faltering now and its all getting a bit frustrating. Even the 4yr olds at work are taking pity on me and trying not to get too frustrated when they have to tell me for the 450th time what the spanish for white board is! Ah well....one day I will get the hand of it.