Invoking God´s Wrath...One Trash Fire at a Time

We have trash pick-up here every Wednesday. A truck come through the center of town and will pick up any bags of trash by the road. I usually take my glass and metal trash to be picked up while I compost my organic trash and burn the rest. I was starting a fire last week with old newspapers to burn my trash (Thanks Steph and Matt for the gift that keeps on giving!). My old and half-senile neighbor came by and tried to take the newspapers I was balling up out of my hand. He kept saying, "Give me your Comercios" (El Comercio is the Quito paper). I tried to tell him that the papers were in English and he couldn´t read them, but he was insistent that I give them to him. Now, this isn´t the first time that he has asked me to give him stuff, so I kept telling him that I needed the papers and the were no good for him. I eventually used all the papers to start the fire and then moved away from the smoke. Don Alfredo walked over to me, looked me hard in the eyes, and told me a story. He said that before he got married, he worked for a Frenchman who owned all the land around the town. He said the one day the Gringo brought out a huge bag of money and asked Don Alfredo to separate it into piles of old and new bills. The man then put the new bills in his safe and took the old bills outside. He then lit the pile of old money on fire while Alfredo watched. Don Alfredo said the he asked the man to give him the money, but the man said that the money was old and useless. Don Alfredo said he still couldn´t understand why the man would rather burn his money that give it away. Then Don Alfredo pointed to a small hill by my house and said, "A week later, the Gringo was driving his tractor on a hill like that. The tractor fell over on the Gringo and he was crushed to death." Don Alfredo then patted me on the shoulder, nodded knowingly, and then asked again for some newspapers. Like I said, he is only half-senile. The story worked, and he got some of the papers I had in my house.

I went back to Tilipulo to transplant the plants that we planted in February. They were doing well and we ended up making 7 more beds. This time we worked with the parents of the kids in the school because they said that the kids hadn´t showed them how to make the beds. It went well and the parents said that they learned a lot. As you can see from the pictures, we made a big difference. The plan is to come back in September after Summer Vacation to plant twice the area. Also, some of the parents said that they were going to make gardens by their houses. This is my real goal for working there. Hopefully with their own gardens, they can improve the diets of the families (especially the children) of that town.

I was in the High School this week, and some of the girls of the third year (15-16 years old)were making maps on big pieces of paper. One of the maps was of all the mountain ranges of North and South America. They were copying it out of their Goegraphy book, and it looked nice. I complemented them on it and asked where Ecuador was on the map. One of the girls said, "Jay, this is a map of mountains!". I said I knew that, but where was Ecuador on the map. She didn´t understand what I ment until I pointed it out and said, "Here!". Then I asked if she knew where the US was. She looked at me like I was an idiot and said, "Jay...this isn´t a map of Europe!". My Fault.

It isn´t hard to figure out why a 16 year old would think that the United States of AMERICA is in Europe when you consider their teachers. I next went into the office and the teachers were huddled around a sheet of paper saying, "Victoria is taller than José, but shorter than Maria. Pablo is taller...". I listened for a minute as they argued over who was the tallest. Finally, I told them the answer and explained it. They were amazed and asked another question. Apparently the teachers have to take an IQ test next week and wer working on practice tests with some difficulty. Since I could get the questions, I am now teaching logic classes to the teachers every day until the test. They dodn´t have experience with these types of tests, and since their raises depend on the results, they are excited to learn.

I actually like the problems. Here are a few examples that they couldn´t get. Fill in the blanks with the numbers that continue the sequence. The answers are on the following post. Good luck.

1) 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 8, 27, 16, __, __, __

2) 2, 4, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, __, __, __

3) 2, 3, 4, 9, 16, 29, 54, __, __, __

4) 0, 1, 1, 2, 4, 7, 13, 24, __, __, __