Brainstorms: Glitter is Coming

We have been making our own Christmas cards for years, filed under Homeschool Art Projects, or Making Virtue out of Necessity. I mean, we have to do something! It's cold outside, and as previously confessed, we're broke.The children need to develop their little hand muscles and artistic souls, so kitchen table cards it is.

Don't let the blog fool you, I am usually not so on top of this process as to have an actual process. It's usually a week long free-for-all of stencils, stickers, paint, and pens. But this year is unusual. I have an idea; a master plan, which I am imposing all over the place, and the kids are knocking it out. Paint, my elves! Paint!

In my adventures, buying used goods at the dump, I happened across the paper doilies and glitter necessary for this project; but not card stock. Instead, I found a big fat short cut in the form of a giant box of hanging file folders. Prefolded cards, just cut them out. I can get two to three from each folder.

You can paint these doilies any which way. George liked imagining where his trees would be cut, and stayed controlled with the lines and colors.

After slathering on some color, and letting it dry, cut the slices. Leaving little breaks of white between colors helps with the snow-covered tree effect.

 Glue the trees onto the folded card bases and top with a dot of glue + pinch of glitter. I hope you already know, the glitter will get everywhere. It's glitter. That's what it does, you know, besides glittering.

 We'll get a metallic ink pen and add some greetings and dots and squiggles, before mailing them all over this side of the planet.

There you have it. If you're on our mailing list, I guess the cat's out of the bag. Sorry for ruining that magical moment when you, with trembling fingers, open the package from our family and see for yourself what the card looks like. I figured it was only fair to warn you: Glitter is coming.

The Muddy Kitchen: Stuff It, Squash It, Love It

See that? There are big changes afoot in the BU! Specifically, the B. Our backyard is in flux*

 

*"In flux" means you don't have to feel bad for having stuff all over the place outside.  We're fluxing, neighbors!


What's all the flux about? The removal of our old outbuilding, to make way for the construction of a greenhouse, for which this is the frame.

While it just looks like a pile of metal sticks, this little baby cost a pretty penny. Buying it pretty much cleaned out our bank account in one fell swoop. When I imagine spending the endless end of winter in it, warm(er), keeping up with my planting schedule, no matter the icy rain, I know it will be worth it. But for now, I have six people to feed and the holidays are coming up.

Don't worry about us, this is what playing in the dirt, frolicking with fowl, and tending plants is all for: feeding the masses.

As I look around at my harvests and holdings, we can definitely make a few weeks of cheap dinners from the bounty. These acorn squash volunteered in my garden, popping up from seeds carried in compost.

       Exactly six. Coincidence????????  Yeah, probably. But also, coincidinner.

Stuffed Acorn Squash

Stuffing:
1 1/2 c. cooked brown rice
1 1/2 c. cooked wild rice
1 c. finely chopped, toasted walnuts
1/2 c. finely chopped onion
3 finely chopped cloves of garlic
3 eggs
1. c. ricotta cheese
1 c. grated Parmesan cheese
sage, parsley, salt, and pepper to taste

Six acorn squash, of various sizes

Preheat oven to 350. After cutting the squash in half and scooping out the seeds, brush insides with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Set aside half of the Parmesan to sprinkle on top, and mix together remaining stuffing ingredients. Spoon into the squash "bowls" and press a little Parmesan cheese onto the top. Bake at 350 until the cheese is brown and the squash flesh is soft, turning halfway through a baking time of about 45 minutes.

Confession: I've made this recipe many times before, and despite it being delicious, it hasn't always gotten rave reviews from the under 12 set.  So I pulled a classic parenting move. I invited my good buddy in all things laborious (who also has been our most vocal anti-stuffed squash family member) Thomas, to help make it. Yes, yes, I do love to get kids cooking, just for its own sake, but there is an ulterior motive here.

 

When a child is free to handle and carefully destroy whole, stimulating ingredients, a deeper level of appreciation for a previously unpopular dish might develop. He smell smells and his eyes water.

 

From mincing, to measuring; stirring to stuffing, a kid plugs a little of himself into the process and notices all of the little things.

I mean, to brush something in extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle it with salt and pepper is a vital life skill, if you ask me.

Things don't just taste that way on their own. The next generation of grown-ups needs to learn that.

After preparing these squash, and sighing with satisfaction as we closed the oven door on them, it suddenly dawned on Thomas that he was not a fan of this dish. Drat! I was hoping he wouldn't remember.

"Hey....I seem to remember HATING stuffed squash!" he said, brow furrowed. I pointed out that they might taste better this time, because he made them. He finished that sentence, smiling, with "in MY image!" Exactly, my boy. You're in that squash, and soon that squash will be in you. Just as it should be.

A Lot of Everything

With each year, I feel my thoughts throb in time to the changing seasons, like a calendar with concepts instead of month names. For me August, September, and October have become Abundance, Acceptance, and Gratitude. This is when I can pull my weight in Asian pears from a tree whose limbs are touching the ground, groaning from all the plenitude of fruits. It is when the bright flowers of early summer are replaced by brown stems and pods full of promises for next year. It is when I clean and sort over 1,000 cloves of garlic for planting and feel like a queen, counting her rubies. It's like an annual crescendo, all the rewards of earlier work, a million wishes coming true at the same time.

Abundance:
After late summer's growing and gathering, early fall is always when I worry about where to put the latest pile of food I have harvested. I have to think in quantities of many gallons at a time. I know that come what may may come, so it just feels good to have A LOT.

But I'm not just talking about storing more shallots than one enormous family should eat in a winter. Our continuation as a species among species is not reliant on any one trait (strength, speed, size, having the most shallots, etc.) but in being ready for anything. Asteroids, Ice Ages, Ebola Zombies From Space: the one thing we all know is that we don't know what's next. Like squirrels preparing for winter, we know we should guard every useful morsel, but who knows what might be called for? What might be deemed useful? In a sense, because we cannot know what we will need next, appreciating diversity ends up being the only winning strategy: believing in the potential value of all things.


Acceptance:
Making my life a little bit fuller lately is a part-time job, working for the local school district. I'm a Special Education/Special Care Assistant at an elementary school, and honored to be part of the team that walks out to meet the short buses in the circle drive every morning.

Our task: to help each child living outside of life's various conventional parameters have the best educational experience possible.

Setting aside the belief that each one of us is a special snowflake for a moment, it is evident, when gathering many children from your town, that some of them are more special.  Maybe what sets one apart is visible from the outside, like her facial features, or his limp. Maybe it's not, like that child who cries inconsolably when overwhelmed, the one who cannot (and maybe should not) sit in a chair for more than ten seconds at a time, or the one for whom all the letters look backward or out of place.

It might be a little simplistic to group them all together when they are each a walking lesson in individuality,  but group them together we must. That's how we can help each one of them get more out of school. Due to the constraints of managing many young people in an enclosed space, the norms within a school can be a little narrow for some kids. With the help of a team of special educators, special students might find that the cookie cutter of classroom life can bend a little, to accommodate them, where they are; allowing the differences they bring to enhance the education of the other students in their class.

Remember that belief we set aside a couple of paragraphs ago? About us all being special? It's true. While categories can be useful, it seems sometimes that they just exist to be selectively ignored or applied.  Special. Average. Different. Normal.

We can live so many ways and make any number of choices during our lives. It's best to respect differences, even if it some of them make standing in line or taking a state assessment more difficult. That's just a matter of what the environment demands. Change the demands, you change everything. Kids who struggle in one system thrive in another, and vice versa. Special kids bring a new human dynamic, a unique contribution, if those in their environment are able to see their potential worth.

                                                      Relativism, FTW.


Gratitude:
When our George was labeled as having special needs, at the age of four, it really made me think. I understood that his diagnosis was made in order to give him access to help from people in the same profession I have just joined. I also knew why they wanted to assess him. Having been around enough four year old boys by then, I knew that, while each one of them was his own little dude, George was different from all of them in a way they were not different from each other. He could add together large numbers and had an amazing memory, but he rarely looked you in the eye and made chit chat.  He preferred to state empirical facts in a monotone, adorably husky, voice.

At preschool, he was very quiet, almost never speaking, causing them to suggest the assessment. He had a complete physical, combined with vision and hearing screenings, and in-depth sessions with speech pathologists and seasoned educators. They wondered if he was autistic, suspected something on the spectrum, but eventually settled on the special needs diagnosis.

Yeah, acceptance and all that, but when your kid gets such a label, you might find yourself looking for reasons why, things you could have done differently. My mind sought high and low through my memory for things that he missed out on, being the youngest of a threesome. Like most new mothers, I trotted my first-born, and second-born (to a lesser extent), to classes and community activities of all sort. George had gotten a lot less of that, as I was busier by the time he was ready for such pastimes.  Resolved to boost and enrich his social life, I looked up the next time and date of story time at our library. I thought it would provide a nice opportunity to spend time with other kids.  I might have been hoping that he'd copy them a little.

It was just the two of us walking into the bright children's section of the library, as the children's librarian began her program for the day.

 A fantastic place, run by a talented and dedicated  children's librarian, don't get me wrong.

With no other children to mind, I was free to ruminate on things I'd heard the specialists say about George as I watched him watch the children's librarian read to the townschildren.


The librarian noted that some of the kids in the group were moving around too much. "GOODNESS! Everyone has such a case of THE WIGGLES! We're going to need to use the WIGGLE BAG!!"she chirped. Soon, she was stooping and holding out an empty black cotton bag to each kid, singing, to the melody of "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands."--"Put your wiggles in the bag, put them in!" Each kid played along gleefully, wiggling their bodies, then tossing their invisible wiggles into the bag, and sitting still.

This is the sort of thing my other sons would have owned, convulsing convincingly and slam-dunking wiggles in an effort to outdo all the other wigglers. Instead, George stared at the little moment of spontaneous improv group theater until the bag got to him. He moved his legs perfunctorily and then flung his hands toward the opening of the bag, with a facial expression that said, "Let me get this straight. We are to wiggle, and then we are to pretend to put something in the bag which we do not put in the bag because it is nothing. Then we are still. And this was fun."

In that moment, I felt a swell of appreciation and kinship for my special son.  His logical mind and his sweetness. He was trying, bless him, to give us all what we wanted, whether it made any sense or not.  If I were a little more dramatic, I might have scooped him up and left at that very moment. Instead, I just made a mental note to let him lead the way more often.

When someone doesn't play along, it can make others nervous, and desirous to change that someone, compel them to conform. But what if we need to have our conventions reconsidered by some in our midst?

Would different people be valuable and important then?

 We have all become quite convinced of the importance of our social norms, 

but that doesn't mean that there isn't something a little asinine about them.

 Maybe it's safer to revel in the subjective, as long as you are reminded that it's just that: subjective. It is appealing to you,

and weird to someone else.

For his sake, for my sake, and for the sake of all people, I didn't want George to stop being different from everyone else. We need him and everyone else like him and everyone else unlike him.

This experience, and a few others, made me decide that George might do very well in an environment more suited to him than his local school classroom. We took the fish out of the tree, so to speak, and decided to unschool away. Let him do what he wanted with his time.

He has spent the last five years, drawing, tending to a revolving menagerie of pets, playing computer games, inventing games with his sister and friends, watching Spongebob, cracking jokes, playing the piano and violin, reading Captain Underpants, playing chess, dancing, writing lists, and riding his bike, among many other things.

He taught himself to read and write, is always researching the solar system, and does math just for fun, often making up problems for himself and solving them.

Those things that made his teachers notice and examine him also make him incapable of telling a lie. He wouldn't know how to begin to manipulate another person, nor can he live with doing anything less than his best effort in any chosen task. Is there still something very distinct about the way he sees the world and expresses himself? Something noticeably unlike everyone around him?

Thankfully, yes.

Dispatches from Dreamland: Recuerdos, a Recipe, and a Request

Remember when I took that trip last month? Boy, I sure do, every day. Leaving my family behind was one of the hardest things I've ever done, but now that I'm home again, I find my thoughts keep flying over the continents and seas to the people who shared their homes with me, and the kids I came to love dearly.

How do we remember things? I could sigh nostalgically over a photo, or my computer screen. There's also the recounting to my husband the billionth tiny detail about daily life there, but the other senses remember things too.

It should come as no surprise that one of my favorite ways to get to Memory Lane is by eating. There were some great food-related memories from that trip (that didn't involve making pizza.) For example, during my next-to-last weekend in South America, a friend I met at the Fundación Niños de los Andes, who also happened to be a chef, took me to her family farm, where I experienced the most delicious celebration of summer: Chiles en Nogada.

 shown here without the Nogada sauce

It's a Mexican dish, but we were eating it in Colombia. And last week, we ate it here in Tillamook. After a night of soaking, a full day of chopping, and a backyard fire, I remembered that afternoon on that mountainside with my mouth.

Chiles en Nogada 

from Marcela Jaramillo Garcia

 chef, teacher, and co-owner of Pishqa and Öll Cocina Artesenal

15 ml. vegetable oil (to fry garlic, onions, tomato, almonds, olives and raisins)
4 cloves of garlic
1/4 c. red onion (finely chopped)
1 pinch sea salt
1/4 c. water
250 g. ripe tomatoes (chopped/liquified)
1/4 c. blanched almonds, halved
50 g. black raisins, chopped (dried cherries would be great here, for the raisin-haters)
8 green olives, cut into fourths
1 t. chopped fresh parsley
1 clove
1/4 cinnamon stick
 8 g. black pepper

15 g. vegetable oil (for frying the fruit)
1 c. diced apple
1 c. diced pear
1 c. diced peaches
1 T. brown sugar
1 c. diced bananas
8 poblano peppers

Nogada Sauce
1/4 c. almonds, peeled and soaked in water overnight
100 g. queso fresco
200 g. walnuts
180 ml. cold water

In large saucepan, heat the oil for frying the garlic, onions, tomato, almonds, olives and raisinsa. Start off by frying two crushed cloves of garlic until they're golden and translucent. Discard.
Add the onion and tomato and cook for a few minutes. Add the almonds, raisins, olives, and parsley. Cook for 2 minutes.
Grind the cloves, cinnamon, and pepper. Add them to the saucepan. Cook them for a minute more and remove the pan from the heat.

In another pan heat the oil for frying the fruit. Start off with two more cloves of crushed garlic, cooked and removed, then add the diced apple, pear and peach. Cover and cook for a few minutes. Add the brown sugar and banana before stirring the fruit mixture into the onion-tomato mixture. Now you have your pepper filling. It looked like this when I was ready to spoon it into the peppers.

To prepare the peppers:
Place whole peppers over direct heat (we used a fire in the backyard fire pit), until the skin is blistered and burned. Like, all-the-way, black-all-over burned. Place them into a sealable plastic bag, to make the peel sweat and easy to remove.

Wait at least fifteen minutes before taking them out and removing all of the blackened skin. After all the black is gone, make a long slit in the pepper, from stem to end, remove the seeds and pat insides dry with a paper towel. Put on a plate and spoon in the filling until full. Then, slather them with this sauce:

Nogada Sauce:
Mix almonds, cheese, and walnuts together in a food processor, using enough water to get a sauce consistency.

Fair Warning: While the dad of the house and I loved everything about Chiles en Nogada, the kids were freaked out by the mix of sweet and savory. You know what that means, I need to make it more often!

When I ate this bright burst of flavors in Colombia, I was on the side of  a steep green mountain, surrounded by fruit trees and tweeting birds. The lightness and balance of flavors is simple and sophisticated at the same time. And, when made with green peppers, it bears the colors of the Mexican flag: red, white, and green.

While I'm no chef, my own stab at stuffed peppers was close enough to make me remember and feel grateful for having had the opportunity to eat Mexican food with new friends in Colombia.

These new friends came into my life because of the heroic organization, Fundación Niños de los Andes, where I spent much of my June.

Last month while working on our Happy fan homage video, I took my camera to the Fundación and soon found myself with a long line of kids who wanted to be photographed: alone, together, in trees, with their boyfriends, and friends. Typical teen activity, no? But more so, because these kids don't have anyone else on the job. It's one thing to call some beloved daughter, taking her billionth bathroom selfie, self-absorbed. It's another thing to see a pretty young girl with her whole life ahead of her, wanting a memento of this fleeting moment, when she and the guy she loves are just figuring out what that even means. Maybe she knows she's beautiful, and maybe that's beautiful.

There's no scrapbook of firsts for this girl. No curl from a first haircut or chubby ink footprints on parchment. No proud mother horning in with a camera to make sure these moments will not be forgotten. It's up to her to capture the magic, and she's not taking the job lightly.

After taking photos of every student with every other student, one younger girl approached me, asking to borrow my camera. This sort of thing is not done, normally. One does not go to South America, visit a place where the kids have very little, and hand one of them your camera. But, I've never been much good at being normal. I handed her my sturdiest camera in an act of faith. She ran around the grounds, taking photos of buildings, animals, her friends, and herself. When I was about to leave, she returned it, anxious to know if she would ever see paper copies of the photos she just took. I promised her I would print them up when I was stateside, and mail them to her. Then, I looked at her photos.

This girl can shoot! 

 That's when I got an idea.

It was at around this point in my trip when I was already planning next year's visit to Manizales, Colombia, to do more work at Fundación Niños de los Andes. As I scrolled through my camera files, looking at the world through her little girl's eyes, I felt the sudden urge to return with a camera or two, teach these kids the basics of photography, and see what kind of art they make. Imagine a small group of camera-wielding kids walking around the grounds of the Fundación, learning and discovering this unique form of self-expression.

Brace yourself. Maybe take a deep breath. I'm about to do some online begging.

It's just that, this where you come in, O, benevolent reader.

I'd like you to send me your unused digital camera(s) if you have any.  If, in your upgrading ways, you happen to have a camera that works well, but probably won't get much more action; and if you have an urge in your heart to do something nice for someone you don't know, I'd love to take said camera to Colombia and give more niños the opportunity to take more fotos. If I get enough, (including chargers/cords/cards and other necessary equipment), I can get permission to teach a workshop with more than one student, develop a structured lesson plan, and complete projects which can be shared here and elsewhere online. So you'll see the memories you helped make.

To contribute your hand-me-down picture taking machine, or ask me for more details about this project before mailing your precious electronic devices to some stranger off the internet, send an email to www.thomaslaszlo11@gmail.com.

Gracias

Dispatches from Dreamland: Back to Reality

This dispatch is from the dreamland that is the coast of the Pacific Northwest. Home from an adventure abroad, I am getting right to work on the many things of summer that require my attention. Just one teeny thing from the trip. A recuerdo for y'all, if you want it.

The kids of Fundación Niños de los Andes wanted to sing something in English, which set me on a mental quest to find something that covered the trifecta of criteria: Popular. Useful, Appropriate. The one song that came to mind which would a) entice all to participate, b) teach phrases and constructions that one might actually use, in English and c) not teach children to say things they are too young to understand was Pharrell Williams', "Happy." Together, we got the lyrics printed and sang the chorus over and over, as I pointed in time to words on a white board. Using the one internet-connected computer at their disposal, the kids watched the official music video, and all of the over eight hundred fan homages. They saw people dance, smile, and clap all over the world, and they wanted to do it too. So, after a quick talk with the directors of the Fundación, we made this, Fundación Niños de los Andes' answer to the ubiquitous anthem for being resilient and cheerful.

I feel deeply grateful to have spent some time with the good people of this organization, and am determined to go back soon and do even more with them. The kids I met and taught schooled me in return; especially on the art of letting nothin' bring you down.

Dispatches from Dreamland: Part III: I'm Hooked and I Can't Stop Caring

¿Cuál es tu sueño?
Por favor, oprima el número uno para inglés..
What is your dream?

Answering that question is how each child who comes to the Fundación Niños de los Andes begins their experience with this organization. For the last week and a half, I have had the distinct honor of volunteering one of the Fundación's sites, here in Manizales, Colombia.

I came for the classroom Spanish practice, I stayed because well, I said I would. But I like staying because every smile, every hug, every kind word, and curious question adds a new crack to my heart.

Time for a sad story: If you've known me for any length of time, you probably know that this isn't my first visit to South America. I traveled to Ecuador when I was in college, many years ago. Even though I stayed in a pretty tame little tourist trap of a town, the reality of life in this part of the world was ever present: children, with no place to live, and nobody caring for them. I saw them scrambling on garbage heaps to eat fruit peels, fighting with stray dogs for old bread, hobbling across the street because they had podiatric issues that were untended, begging for money, but still happy when they got a warm sweater instead. I guess I should have been deeply saddened by all of this, but the factors behind their unprotected childhoods were so immense, and so unsolvable; being a pouty gringa seemed profoundly useless.

And now, if you can take it, another sad story. Meet Jaime Jaramillo.

Known in these parts as "Papá Jaime," he was motivated to help children living in the streets, sewers, and dumps of Bogotá, Colombia, when he saw such a child, a young girl, crushed by a truck. She had rushed into the street to pick up what she thought was a box containing a doll. The box was empty. Jaime couldn't continue with life as he had lived it before after witnessing that. He founded Fundación Niños de los Andes in 1988, and  little by little, he built an organization that, for the children it has helped, has made all the difference in the world.

 

How does one approach this problem, much less solve it? I have had a little time to get to know the Fundación Niños de los Andes, and their approach focuses on the child. After receiving a child who has been removed from the dangerous environment in which he or she lives, they set about the gargatuan task of improving their lives, a little bit at a time. Once medical needs have been met, the child is asked "What is your dream?" Gone is the superstition that uttering your inner hopes will prevent them from coming true. The good people working for the Fundación know that you can't make something happen if you never allow yourself to say it out loud. Once the children can articulate a real goal for their lives, they are asked to paint a picture of their dreams, so they can start to realize them.

Through community partenerships, these kids get to do the things they drew: become athletes, fly in an airplane, learn English, achieve career goals, gain an education.

When I arrived for my first day at the Fundación Niños de los Andes, I was greeted by friendly directors who explained to me their mission, introduced me to the staff, and gave me a tour of the grounds. I admired how clean and efficient the facilities are, providing for every need imaginable. Their goal is to address the mental, physical, and spiritual needs of everyone they help.  Some kids might have been sleeping in sewers, boxes, steps, or not at all, due to drug addiction. Here, they each have a fully made bed, complete with a stuffed animal. Instead of hunger, they are fed well-balanced meals. Abuse and neglect are replaced with loving staff, who are teachers and mentors who hug them and wipe away their tears when the details of their personal lives hurt too much.

My tour wasn't limited to the buildings. I also discovered a very special project known as the Sendero Mágico. "The Magical Path," is an immense symbolic outdoor project that I would call a garden, if that were sufficient enough.  For now, it is outlined, with some of the vision realized.

 

A little more than a painting of a dream, drawn in the dirt, the idea is for this strip of nature is for the public at large to have an opportunity to access the kind of self-improvement offered to the children there. The basic premise of the Fundación Niños de los Andes is to attend the body, mind, and spirit of its children, and this is manifested in the outline and plan of the Sendero Mágico. Due to a tragic accident, Papa Jaime is now quadriplegic. For this reason, the entry to the garden will be filled with plants that he, and people like him, can sense: full of color, aroma, and taste. On to the zen garden, where there will be an area suitable for yoga classes, and next to it, the place where the mind is tended by the forces of nature. Earth and air, which are present anywhere you go outside.

 Fire

 in the form of a fire pit. Water

 

 in the form of a reflecting pool.

These areas are dedicated to bringing harmony to the mind. At the path's end, there is a large paved spot. This is where visitors will be asked to paint a picture of their dream; invited to take all that they have gained from the magic garden and push it into some kind of real change in their lives.

It's also a great place for hand-stands.

After touring the Sendero Mágico, I was moved. Everyone I've met here in Colombia is a very devout Catholic, yet this garden is full of Eastern philosophy. I admire how they embrace other ways of reaching the same goal. Is it inner peace? Self discipline? Impetus to change themselves? I can't quite put my finger on it, but I can't deny it's good.

After ambling peacefully through the magical path, I was thrown into the girls' house, to hang out with them a bit, and have lunch, after which, I would be "rescued." Um...okay. What was I in for?

I don't know if anything could have prepared me for what was next. In five short minutes, I found myself of a bench, surrounded by about twenty girls, one of whom gave me a glare that rivals pre-film career Ice Cube. I was devastated and enamored all at the same time, especially when she sat next to me without saying a word and put her head on my shoulder. They all wanted to sit next to me, and the ones sitting next to me, wrapped their arms around my waist, put their hands on my knees, and occasionally touched my hair. It was a little intense, but I wasn't put off by any of it. These were girls living without mothers, and even though some of them were quite grown young ladies, it was obvious that inside them was a child, reaching out for something: diversion, affection, attention, a chance to prove how cool and funny they are. And they are.

They asked me questions. I tried to understand and answer them. They asked me to sing something in English. How to explain the them that the songs I can most easily sing are in Spanish? Lame. As I looked at all of the expectant faces, I shouted at myself in my head, "THINK OF SOMETHING!" For some reason, all my brain coughed up in response was Baby Got Back. They absolutely loved it, and asked me to sing it again and again. Eventually, I asked them to clap for me, to lay down the beat. As I rapped one of the tackiest songs in existence, within minutes of meeting all of them, I tried not to dwell too much on how surreal it all was. I didn't want to forget a lyric or mess up my ritmo.

They moaned with delightful yearning when I said I was married. The ultimate in grown-upness! And have four children? And a zooful of pets?! Big eyes all around and more questions. They asked me how to say their names in English, told me on what days to expect the best meals, and then cranked up the music and started dancing the rhumba in pairs. One of them grabbed me and started commanding me on how to move my feet. Being a total Latin music geek, I've basically been practicing for this very moment most of my adult life. I picked it up quickly, and they exclaimed how fast I learned. Then, the reggaeton, which for those who don't know, is straight up booty-shaking music. Being pretty sweaty and completely without boundaries at this point, I responded to their demands to dance with a quick how-low-can-you-go grind-off with one of the other girls. Complete abandon, what did I have to lose? Hooting and applause ensued. I was in and loving every minute of it.

Before anyone out there thinks I returned to South America to have a teen dance party, I should say, the rest of my time at the Fundación has been seriously spent, teaching English to some of those girls, and whole lot of other students. My heart flips out a little when I walk into a big whitewashed classroom, full of kids shouting, "GOOD MORNING TEACHAIR!"  I smile from ear to ear and shout, "GOOD MORNING, STUDENTS!" and when one of the bright-eyed boys I teach asked me, "¿Cuál es tu sueño?" I said, "To come to Colombia and meet you."

A dream come true, painting and all.  

They still make me perform Baby Got Back at least twice during every class break, even though I have other, better material for them to sing.

This is probably how Sir Mix-a-Lot feels.