niña, agua and who is mama gatito?

Boquete, Panamá March 26


When we decided to do a work-trade for free Spanish lessons I was ready to get back to work and jump-start my brain. Jamey and I had worked out a deal with Ins (the owner of Spanish by the River) where we would take four hours of lessons in the morning and in the afternoons Jamey would help out with some painting they needed around the house and I would watch her two children. Great, I thought. I had experience watching a certain little boy named Aiden and I felt that I could handle just about any nanny experience. I didnt take into account that Aiden is a boy that does boy things and these were girls that do very girl things. For example, most days here are spent playing princess cats or ¨princesa gatitos¨, brushing each others hair, playing house or play cooking. All of the aforementioned games I had never played with Aiden. My nephew and I spent many hours wrestling, eating, running, diving, jumping and screaming but we never did play princesa gatitos. I realized quickly that I would be receiving two types of education at our Spanish school, Spanish and how to entertain a 2 year old and 4 year old girls. With no TV watching allowed and ample space and beautiful weather outdoors we spend most of our time enjoying the Boquete sun and soft rain showers. Our days consist of various play themes mostly revolving around animals. We decide who is whose mamma and who is the niña. Rocío, the one and half year old, inevitably is the ¨niña¨(which she says over and over and over) and I am relegated to either a bus driver or the house keeper while Camila is usually the mama. She takes the matriarchal mammalian role very seriously and is often nursing her stuffed animals. After about two hours of that business we usually eat some, as Rocío calls it, yum yum( i.e. snacks), and then move on to another game just in time for them to get cranky and run off to Ins.




(camila, 4 years old, mama gatito)

It is exhausting to do this everyday. I love the Spanish lessons and I love playing with the girls and at the end of the day I love the fulfillment and tiredness it all brings. Recently Feranando, Ins´husband and their other daughter, Sophia, returned from a trip in Costa Rica where they were checking up on one of their other schools in Turrialba. Sophia is the eldest girl at 10 years old. The age gap between her and the younger girls sometimes puts a snag in our play time, mostly because Sophia has outgrown princesa gatitos and would like to play more grown up games that involve a lot of props and a lot of Sophia bossing everyone around. Most of the time they are content playing with each other but other times Sophia is off taking English lessons, Dutch lessons and practicing the Hebrew alphabet which she just learned from a traveler from Israel. I tell her that I am jealous that she is trilingual. Sophia is a smart girl. Today we were perusing the National Geographic in Español and we flipped to a page where she pointed and said ¨Hey look, this is in Africa.¨Glancing over I was quick to agree but a second glance made me realize that the picture was not of Africa, nowhere close. It was a picture of residents of New Orleans crowded around a water truck at the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina. There have been many times where I have looked at a picture of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath and could not believe that it was the United States. I thought this was a perfect time to teach Sophia a gentle lesson in social responiblility (or in GW´s case, neglect) and geography of the USA. I explained to her that it was not Africa but was indeed the US and those people in the picture were impacted greatly by the storm mostly because they were poor and had no way to escape the rising waters and also because they live in a flood plain. I told her about the US and that unfortunately, it is a country that has neglected a large part of the population and that hopefully, after this disaster, that our government will take more responsibility for their own citizens well-being. Sophia points to the picture again and then asks ¨well do they speak English there?¨ It was apparent that she could not believe that the US had a poor population much less a city that was almost completely destroyed by a storm. I wasnt even sure she knew that there is such an extensive African American population in the US. It was another moment where I was able to appreciate National Geographic on so many levels. I think after our little conversation that she left a lot more informed (if not a completely leftest liberal) especially because I can see her propensity for absorbing information. She is inquisitive and smart and will do very well for herself.
After is all said and done, on Wednesday to be exact, I think that I will have improved my Spanish quite a bit and understand that little girls truly are a whole different adventure from little boys, and, equally as exhausting.

(Rocío, 1 and a halfish, niña and sometimes agua)

Also....


I am going to include a picture of Sophia as soon as I can snatch one. And..
I am working on getting my pictures on CD and once I am done I will post the link under the last link from Bocas and Pto. Viejo. Bueno!