Los Padres

Thursday was registration day for the new semester at the school. The social worker has still not returned from holiday, so I was a "floater", helping out the teachers. In Guatemala schools do not get the kind of State funding and support that US schools do, so the families themselves are in charge of providing all art and classroom suppies, in addition to their own notebooks and school supplies. The children are all very adorable (not shocking, I mean, they are children) and sign a fair amount. I was impressed to see that a lot of the parents signed basic things too. About half of the children came for registration with just their mothers, but the other half came with brothers and sisters (many of them babies in Mayan cloth clings) and some dads! I only noted two parents who asked their children to use spoken Spanish to greet the teachers.
Things have gotten a bit befuddled with my schedule; now the social worker is not returning until WEDS, so I have 2 idle days next week. It´s a good thing that I will be able to make up the internship hours with a Gallaudet trained Audiologist working in Guatemala City. I will be following up with patients and their families about use and efficacy of their assistive devices (primarily hearing aids because Cochlear Implants are very rare here).
The faculty are very friendly, I hope to get to know them all better. 1 of the 2 Deaf teachers has a deaf family and her siblings are deaf and married to deaf people in the US! Everyone takes a short break around 10 for a snack, which entails going to the parking lot of the Robles hospital for a hot dog or something else from a vender. Get this--New York and Chicago may pride themselves on the distinctive condiments adorning their hotdogs, but here in Guate, they put Guacamole, Mayo, ketchup and Onions on them, served on bread or in a tortilla. If you want pop with it, they open the glass bottle, pour it into a little plastic bag, and stick a straw in it, so they can recycle the bottles. Mmmm!