a trip to the hospital

So yesterday was quite the interesting day. It started off like any other day here. I had breakfast, and then the kids came. I helped a little girl with her homework, which consisted of watching her colour in the outline of the letter i, and trying to explain something in spanish to her, which she didn´t understand, so I gave up and just let her colour things. Then Liliana, one of the teachers here asked Juliette and I to teach the kids a song in english. So I thought the best song to teach them would be head and shoulders, knees and toes because it´s easy to translate and parts of the body are easy things for kids to learn at their age. So I wrote out the song on a large sheet of paper so everyone could see, and Juliette read it for them first a few times. Then I sang it for the kids, and they joined in after a couple of times. It was so funny watching them try to pronounce all the words correctly. Instead of knees they said mees, and instead of eyes they said aies. And they can´t pronounce the ¨th¨ sound, so mouth was a funny one to hear too. And they can´t pronounce my name either. They say Kalie, or Kachee, or Kajee, it´s so funny! So they really loved that song, and they kept asking me how to sing it. Even today when I was upstairs I would randomly hear cute little voices trying to sing it, so sweet. So after we taught the kids that song, we went to the park again. After about 15 minutes or so, I heard a bunch of kids yelling Profe! Profe! and saw them running towards me. So I looked and saw Juliette lying on the pavement at the other side of the park, so I ran over, and she had rolled her ankle really badly while playing soccer. So Liliana and I helped her up and helped her limp back to the centre. It was really swollen, so someone called a taxi and Lina, the other teacher, and I went with her to the hospital. She didn´t want to go without me, and it´s a good thing I went because I had to be the translator...or at least attempt to translate what was said. The people at the hospital couldn´t figure out her insurance, so she ended up paying, and was supposed to call the insurance company with the bill later, but it wasn´t that much so she didn´t bother. But thankfully she was admitted pretty quickly, and they gave a wheelchair for her to sit in. The doctor came and I tried to translate for her, and then they wheeled her off to another room, but Lina and I didn´t go in with her. But after about 30 seconds the nurse called us over because they were about to give her a large shot of something in her butt and she wanted to know what it was. Apparently it was for the pain and to reduce the swelling, and she didn´t want it, and it did seem very strange that they wanted to give her a shot of something for a rolled ankle...but she´s quite a loud person and only one doctor spoke some english, so lots of people were laughing at her. It was quite the experience. Then I went with her to get an x-ray taken, and after looking at it the doctor told her she needed to get a tensor bandage and wear it for 15 days. She´ll be ok, thankfully it wasn´t broken or anything, but it still kind of sucks because she´s supposed to leave here in less than 2 weeks to go to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands to hike around, and then on to Peru to volunteer in an orphanage. So hopefully it heals quickly!! And yesterday was our afternoon off, we get one per week, and all 3 of us volunteers took the same afternoon off. We were supposed to go into town and maybe see a movie and walk around, but because of Juliette´s injury we ended up just hanging around at the house, watching tv and going on the internet. Today was a pretty good day. I taught the older kids some french in the morning which was fun but also very confusing...trying to think in 3 languages at the same time is quite a task! But most of the words I was searching for came back to me so that was good. Lunch was a little hectic serving without Juliette, but alright. And I taught the younger kids some english words in the afternoon. Always a good time. We were supposed to go dancing with the family we´re staying with tonight, but I don´t know if that´s going to happen anymore. Right now there are a doctor and a dentist here and a bunch of kids getting checked out by them downstairs...and the president is here again too..apparently he likes Berenice, the program coordinator, hehe. So, that´s all for now, buenas noches amigos :)