Lately

It's Saturday night, February 5th here. It seems like there is more and more going on and less and less time to write it down. I'll really have to write a book after Rincon so you can know EVERYTHING!
Life with 60 chicas is becoming more and more ordinary. They have accepted me! And they greet me every time they see me. Some only in Spanish, some want to stand out and they say 'Hello!' I will start to fulfill my teacher's duties next week, then probably everyone but few will wish to say 'Hello!' For them it's really really cool if they know how to say something in a different language. 
Some things about the cool chiquitas. When they have nothing to do, they sing. They sing in bed, in shower, at the textbook, in the corridor... they sing everywhere. And they have really interesting voices... I will definitely record them and play them for you when I'm in Latvia. Since they don't have a radio, they provide music for themselves. I LOVE to listen to them! Another interesting thing is that they're always hungry. Right after lunch or dinner I can see that a group of girls is trying to get some berries from a nearby fruit tree with a tall bamboo stick again. I have no idea what it's called in Latvian but it looks like a mix of plum and apricot. Very good. They also love to look at themselves in the mirror. They comb their hair countless times  and make the same hair-do again and again. Many of them haven't had a mirror at home so now they look at themselves in the mirror really thoroughly. Then you can see groups of girls where one is a leader and she usually sits somewhere higher. This leader usually looks different from the other girls - either she is a little lighter, has different features, or is a little richer. She talks most of the time, the others listen and laugh or agree with her, depending on the situation. On the first day of school they all decorated their notebooks. It is very important to have more than the name of the school, grade and subject on the first page. You have to draw a special frame around! So they all color as pretty as they can. Some have palm trees, some have the morning star, some have hearts and flowers but everyone has some artwork there. And as far as I have seen the boys' notebooks, they do the same thing!
One day my job was to take all the guest bedding from late Claudia's home a the storage room at the girls' dorms. So I was sorting the bedding and putting it on shelves. Girls came in time after time, watched what I'm doing and always said: Muy bonito! (Very beautiful!) I thought I was simply putting bedding in nice piles but I guess it was unusual for them...
They have gotten braver about visiting my window, too. Sometimes several of them come to my window and look inside. They wonder and say 'Muy bonito!' again :D I guess it's because I don't have shoes and clothes all over the place like in their rooms :) In general I've been watched all the time. Even though it seems like they have accepted me, there are some little eyes watching me anyway. People's eyes by day and my bug friends' by night, they're trying to find a fresh piece of flesh that's not yet bitten by them :D So I have a big responsibility to be a good example for them. Principal Panfil told me straight away that she wants me to be the good example for the teachers at school for they, too, have some attention, behavior, discipline and tidiness issues... for they're just Bolivians themselves... so I have a great "state" duty to show them the good "work style". Sometimes it feels weird that I have such a great responsibility but I have to do what is expected from me!
One more piece of news is that I will have more grades to teach English to besides highschoolers. Teacher Norah (Panfil and Samuel's daughter in law) who taught 7th and 8th grade is a mother to 3 little children, she is also the librarian and takes care of the school shop. She asked me to teach her classes so that she has more time for her other duties. After discussing this with Velta we decided that I can do this. It means that I will have to teach 16 classes a week... I'll have 7 classes on Monday! May God be with me!
On Friday I was watching some classes. And I understood why they can sing their weird national anthem so well. They begin and end each day by raising the Bolivian flag and singing some verses from the anthem, which has 10 verses altogether. They translated one sentence for me. The best one - I'd rather die than give away my country Bolivia to a stranger. It was interesting to watch that even the little 5 and 6 year olds sing these fateful words with such serious faces.
Then I was surprised that the PE teacher also teaches them nice handwriting! It was so interesting to watch that such a grown-up, large man demonstrates how to neatly write different letters on the blackboard. Panfil told me later that in real life his handwriting is quite awful :D And this wasn't 1st graders' class, it was the 8th graders'. I guess they have this class all the time.
Today I'm actually more tired than usual. I worked in the big second-hand clothe storage room  almost all day long. And there are billion clothes without any system. So I was working hard to create an order there. It was really hard. But I'm really determined to finish this work next week! After all I have a pretty close relationship with second hand clothes :D