After a long chronicling silence, we'll make up with a full diary-style account of the last month, as it was quite eventful or at least not a standard work&family-life one.
(You're officially entitled to blame those who complained we hadn't written much in a long while...) If it's too much, check just the pictures.
1- Nothing special, but being Thursday we can remind you of the sport afternoons, which over this month were quite good (apart from some missed sessions due to the rain), with 10 to 16 for the young group and up to 8 with the older kids, who are starting to train harder and harder.
2- Past volunteers started flocking back for visits: at the moment we've got 2, but over the month there will be 5, some staying nearly a month, some just ten days. Among them we mention Lukas, a very tall Belgian who became a good friend; one afternoon, and even a Saturday morning, he will join Mattia's sport programme and confirm our feeling that is really a good project. Tonight, dinner with many volunteers at Reyna's place; she's the force behind Reforzamiento (morning/afternoon school-help programme) and is a really open lady, sharing food and her simple house not only with us today, but with many people, mostly youth, on several occasions, especially at Christmas, when she cooks for plenty of friends and neighbours.
3- Visit at the optician's for the boys; they suggested a better check with a doctor, so we'll arrange that for another time, looking at the best options.
In the afternoon, Michele at Jaciel's house, where there's Jeffrey too, another good friend and classmate, and Jaciel's cousin; Sam plays on the roof with his best friend Matthew.
4- Two new long-term volunteers join the community on the roof: Marlene&José, a young newly-married couple from the States, but with Mexican origins (he was born and lived there for 9 years). We liked them from the very start and we keep loving them and enjoying their presence a lot, not only for the good friendship and nice communal living on the roof, but also, or especially, for the sharing of beliefs and vision, on this place, on our call, on development....
Michele, and even Sam, are invited by Jaciel's family for a day out at a park with plenty of attractions: guess what? They liked it immensely!
5- With an acto cívico, a gathering of all classes for a patriotic ceremony with anthem singing and poetry recitals, the school started the period dedicated to the celebration of Independence Day (read post below for more, with plenty of photos and videos).
6- Morning birthday party for
Barbara, the amazing 80 year old founder of UPAVIM, here since mid July and until the end of the month, with firecrackers at 5.30am and
tamales with hot drinks for breakfast, all on the roof, with many women from UPAVIM coming to celebrate the lady who started and keeps driving forward this organisation with her strong character. In the evening,
Elena joins the group who take the birthday "girl
" to dinner; when they come back, they find a lovely surprise: the rain, with the cooperation of a blocked draining hole, have flooded the first (ground) floor, so they keep mopping up till past midnight.
8- The morning party is now a roof tradition, though luckily this time the firecrackers start at 6; for Michele and Sam it was a surprise, as you can see in the pictures and most of all in the video (downloadable from dropbox) in the relevant post down below.
9- We can't get through to him due to various issues, but we send
Birthday Grandad Ezio a nice sound recording.
10- Great celebrations in UPAVIM for
Barb's birthday party: lunch for dozens of people, with marimba music (played
ensemble by a group of students of a nearby school -
video to download from here),
piñata (the papier-mache figure smashed by birthday children all over
Latin America - in this case in the shape of Donald Trump, to let the democratic old lady beat him hard at least once), speeches and dances (even for
Daddy&Mummy).
11- Michele's birthday party at the park (see post below).
13- Mattia meets a lady from MercyCorps, the organisation who might give UPAVIM a substantial grant for the youth project he is setting up (in collaboration with Viviana, from the library and Reyna from Reforzamiento, to make it as big as necessary for it to be hopefully approved); the lady seems happy with the ideas, which is encouraging.
Michele, again together with Lucky Sam, goes to his great pal Jaciel's birthday.
14- On the eve of the Día de la Independencia, Mattia joins the people of the cuadra (literally "block of houses" but used to name our neighbourhood) for the Antorchas: a "run" with torches from the city centre back to our place. It's nice to be invited and to be part of the tradition, but it is quite a long night, first with the long journey in the jammed traffic, on a full noisy bus (not all with run, but there are over 50 people), then the long wait to start (the bus must follow the runners and it took it ages to go round the meeting area) and finally what turned out to be a long jog-stop-run-jog-stop exhausting move back home, topped by the nasty habit of some young people to transform the tradition of throwing water onto the runners into a water-bag throwing sport which hurt Mattia a few times. The group stayed up late in the callejon (narrow alley) in front of our building for dances and drinking, but Mattia managed to slip quietly away...
15- After all the school events and last night's celebrations, the day itself is quite calm around here and we take it that way, rather than going to the centre for crowded events; we still have some very good time, with sport for the kids in the afternoon and celebrating José's birthday in the evening on the roof.
17- Weekend at home, which can be hard, as Michele is a bit sick, though nothing serious.
Second trip to the athletic track, with José joining Mattia (and Lukas too for the first part) in taking a bigger group of kids to train: 7 rather than 3, with 3 of them not from our school and even 2 girls!
18- After the August Olympic break, this month we're getting back on track with our Shakespeare nights: to celebrate his year, every second Sunday, we either read an adapted tale or watch one of a series of high quality animated movies. Tonight's is time for gruesome Richard III.
19- Nothing special, but like every Monday, Wednesday and Friday,
patient mummy takes
M&S swimming; they are slowly improving, thanks to having nearly learnt to stay in the water the whole lesson, enduring the moderate chill of the rainy-season, both for pool and outside temperature.
20- Another birthday party on the roof, this time for Hannah, Sam's English teacher.
21- Lovely stay of
Giorgio, an Italian whom we didn't know, but who was here from a
Fair Trade organisation to check UPAVIM's work: we were glad to lend him the kids room and the 3 crammed nights were more than compensated by the great company, especially for the long interesting conversations, where we were able to share a lot, with a man of solid views and experiences, about this area, our work, modern cooperation and what's working and what could be better in this organisation.
22- 3rd and 6th grade perform a concert of English songs, which they've practiced for a long time, each class their own, for
Barbara, to thank her for the new classrooms and give her a good farewell.
25- For
Mickey's birthday, and for
Sam's too, in advance, we took our second trip to
Antigua, with a specific target: the workshop at the
ChocoMuseum! Read post on the birthday below for more, or go to the gallery page for pictures, which unfortunately you can't taste...
29- Mattia is busy writing the application for the grant for the youth project, as he's been the whole week, long nights included, when someone pokes him on the shoulder... it's
Fernanda, past volunteer and great friend of ours, back for just a few days to get an MRI on her knee (cheaper to fly and have it done here than to do it in the
States...): BEST.SURPRISE.EVER.
30- Día del niño (Kids' Day): another opportunity to miss school, which is replaced by a show by the teachers (long silly dances by the ladies, storytelling by
Daddy, who saved Michele from brain-death and captived all the children with a colourful-clothed rendition of the
Pied Piper, flute playing included), plenty of junk food, some games for each class and an awful fight-for-the-sweet version of the
piñata, plus gifts by the local
Rotary Club, who apparently still believe it is good for children in disadvantaged areas to receive plastic toys (all for the same age, from 1st to 6th grade...) and t-shirts from people dressed as Super Heroes... Apart from schools' events, the day and the following weekend (or week, or month) are also a great opportunity for shopping centres and fast-food restaurants to lure people to spend more and eat worse.
Not to finish the month and the post on such a negative note, the evening, or better the night, is dedicated by
Mum&Dad to packing clothes (and food for the journey), for our upcoming long-weekend escape, as in the morning, as early as we manage (possibly before 6.30), we're going to
México for VISA reasons: the first 90-day tourist VISA can be renewed once, but then, at the 6th month, you must leave the country for at least 3 days and then come back and start again; given that Honduras and El Salvador don't count and Belize is too expensive, we're having a short holiday in Tapachula, just north of the Mexican border, the closest we can go. So, 6 or more hours on the bus are awaiting, but after that it will be a nice, much needed break, sooner or later to be described on this blog!
To celebrate the 524th anniversary of the 
