"Portate bien. Te amo."

This week I received a love note :) Ok, it was from a 7-year-old, but it all the more made my week. During the chaos of a first-grade lesson, one of the boys shoved a crumpled note into my hand then ran back to his seat. I glanced at the note but wasn't sure if it was something intercepted and stealthily being turned in to the teacher, or what, so I didn't think much of it and put it in my pocket. Then at the end of class, Matias came up to me and excitedly asked, "Did you get my note???" I pulled it out and read, "Portate bien. Te amo." Translation: You behave well. I love you. Um, could anything be any cuter??? He went on to explain that the little drawing next to the heart was me. This is why I love working with the little ones... from the spontaneous bear-hug I received in the middle of a third-grade class to love notes, their affection is just always on their sleeve.

It was, however, significantly less cute when a tall 6th grade boy would not stop hugging me on Friday, and then insisted on wrapping his arms around my legs and lifting me off the ground several times. Really... not so cute or appropriate anymore at 12...

Let's see, what else. Last Sunday we had a little bit of a fail when we missed the one mid-day bus to the termas (thermal baths) to meet up with the Salto (Fulbright) kids. We ended up going just for a few hours at the end of the day, which was better than nothing. It was nice to see them and swap stories about our experiences thus far... I was disappointed that none of them will be going to Colon with us next weekend when my brother comes, but hopefully we will plan another trip with them soon. Then we had our usual schedule at the elementary school... still trying to figure out what will happen with the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade English classes, since apparently the substitute is not coming back next week (legal reasons having to do with a system I don't really understand)... so we may be back in the saddle again, in a manner of speaking.

On Thursday night, we had an interesting, positive experience going to the night school (mostly adults returning to school) offered at a high school here and giving a presentation on ourselves and, sort of oddly enough, Edgar Allan Poe. I do find it a little comical sometimes the topics we are asked to present on or comment on... I haven't studied Poe since high school at best, maybe even middle school (I think we saw a play version of the Tell-Tale Heart...?), so the best that I can offer is my own analytical skills and what I can find on the Internet!

Yesterday I also had a GREAT meeting with the best contact I have made so far to really get to the heart of doing women's studies work here, specifically domestic violence. She is a representative who sits on the round-table assembly for domestic violence in Paysandu, with representatives from all types of organizations- the police, children's rights groups, etc. Apparently the group she was part of lost funding so now she does the work on a volunteer basis, but she is very involved in the DV community, knows all the ins and outs, and is connected to all the other people involved, so in the coming weeks we will be visiting with various people so I can get a sense of how things work, as well as share a bit about my understanding of how things work in the U.S. On Tuesday, I will be going to the actual round-table assembly with her, which meets about once a month, so I feel really lucky that I have such conscientious mentors and such helpful people to help me really get me to the heart of things here! She also had a lot of suggestions about how to get involved in Montevideo, so that will be a huge head-start there. And of course, like so many people we have met here, she is also a teacher (a private English teacher, in fact, although we of course spoke in Spanish).

We also saw a car smash into a woman on a motorbike last night (she was ok, just shook up, understandably). The crazy driving here is just UNbelievable... I kind of consider every day that I don't get run over here a success.

Last night we also made our way to a nightclub for the first time. Of course there were some people our age, but at times we also just felt old... we even bumped into one of the high-school students we had spoken to at length after a presentation we gave at her school one day. Can you say, awkward? No, it was really fine, just funny. We kind of just kept waiting for one of our 6th graders to pop out and greet us...