Dance party!

Today, after snoozing too many times, signing up for one more week at the Golden Gym (On Jr. Colon, right near where it intersects Pizarro by Romano's), and eating the "menú familiar" at Demarco, I was ready for action. Jaime helped me bring the TV down to the street and hail a cab and then I was off to work.

I arrived and everything went well, though almost comically slow. After taking the celebratory, symbolic photos--with Ever on my shoulders and the kids holding up our English flashcards--we then tried to turn the TV on. First, all the outlets are old-fashioned, so the modern plug with the slightly bigger prong did not go in the wall. Going for a different approach, I got a little electric shock trying to plug in a ghetto extension cord which turned out also to have the outdated plugs. Finally Walter, one of the maintenence guys, used some tool to shave down the TV's oversized prong (probably not that safe) while I meanwhile did some paperwork with the "gerente," or manager.

So the TV worked, but what do we watch? The antenna gets about 2 channels coming in well, and the programs on those channels are crap. So they bust out the DVD player and for the first 5 minutes I try to get it to work it is completely lifeless. Finally fiddling with the plug gets it some juice: sweet! I go to the cabinet to get the children's DVD I had seen a few days ago. Put it in and.... "Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you?". Happy Birthday? Where's the video. I look at the case again, and realize: oops, its just an MP3 cd.

Oh well. But the kids are really excited, and so I skip ahead a few tracks and find a upbeat song, and the kids start to dance. Nice! So we had a little dance party, and after a while Lupe brought the all the boys but two into the dining room for a "nap." Naptime is code for how the staff find ways to bullshit when they see that a couple kids are tired. After their "luncheon" the kids came back to our room (I have no idea what to call it still, what shame). They did puzzles until the end of the day, and that's that!