A better day wih CSG and going to the laundry mat

Tuesday, June 30

Today in my CSG, we played a game called "Where's the carrot?" It was a good game to teach listening and cooperation. The students, in groups of 4, had a "vegetable stand" which was a 3x4 grid. Each student had 3 clues about where the various fruits and vegetables were located in the stand that they had to read out loud to share with the group. They HAD to read them out loud and work together. It was a great lesson to learn some fruits and veggies, but also propositions like above, below, next to, and in between. The students were very focused and worked on it for almost the whole hour! It was nice for me to have a sort of break.

After school, some of us went to take our clothes to a lavandaria, a wash-house I guess. The don't have self-service laundromats,only places to take your clothes where women wash them and you pay by the kilo. We took it to a place near the hotel, but I had a lot of clothes. The 3 others could get their clothes on Friday, but mine wouldn't be done until Saturday. We are going out of town on Saturday, and they are closed on Sunday, so couldn't get my clothes until Monday afternoon, almost a whole week later! Obviously this wouldn't work, so some of us walked a few yards down the street and found another one. This one was run by and old woman who answered the door carrying a morose toddler. I think she lived behind the counter  as well as worked there. I got 20 pieces washed, dried, ironed, and folded all for a bit over 10 bucks. It's the only time I'll need to do laundry here, so it's pretty ok. I felt good about helping this lady out, I guess. It's hard to see how many of these places stay in business, because there were several on the same street.

After that, I went down the street to get tapioca for the first time! It's not the pudding like you're thinking of. It is sort of a grainy flower that is made into kind of a pancake and filled with stuff, like a quesadilla, I guess. it was really good. I saw a man eating out of a trash bag on the curb. The other coaches live in bigger cities where they are used to seeing this sort of thing, but it still shakes me up.